"Recognizing the importance for all youth to have a safe place to call home, we are excited that the KEYS project will not only help local youth experience this security, but it will also track the effectiveness of the various strategies being employed, to further enhance the success of this community-wide effort," said Clayt Daley, President of the Daley Family Foundation.

Arianna Jones was 17 years old and about to start her senior year when she became homeless. “I was kicked out of the house,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “I didn’t really have so much support there, except for one person.” Now Jones is using that experience to try to help others. She’s part of the team behind a plan called KEYS to a Future Without Homelessness.

"We are seated in a huddle room at Lighthouse Youth & Family Services, a partner agency to the Freestore Foodbank. It is the day before Thanksgiving and unlike the rest of the world, the atmosphere inside the building is strangely tense. "

Each New Year brings about new resolutions for everyone. Some choose to make a change in their own lives, while others vow to make a difference within their community. You can accomplish both by resolving to volunteer more in 2019.

Your year-end gift will help Lighthouse be there for kids who are homeless, alone, and have nowhere to turn.

No one wants to think about innocent children being homeless. But homeless kids do exist; I was alone and homeless when I was just 13 years old.

"Prior to coming to Lighthouse, I was homeless. Knowing that I have a place like this, I actually feel like I have someone on my side.... The first time I smiled in a long time was the day I got my apartment." 21-year-old Celeste, a resident of the Lighthouse Sheakley Centr for Youth

Kim Davis said the children she and her husband, Keith, have fostered have required extensive mental and behavioral health services to work through the trauma they had experienced. "All of those services are through Hamilton County," she said. "Without those services, I don't know where we would be. I don't know where the children would be. Emotionally, it would be so much harder for them to heal."

The number of abused and neglected children in our community is on the rise. The number of children served in custody has increased by 41% in only 3 years.