Erie County Community Foundation 2022 Annual Report

About Nehemiah Partners Center: • Established in 2007 by a group of local churches to provide a safe, bully-free place for Sandusky children. • Employs 2 full-time employees and engages approximately 40 volunteers. • Operates a free after-school program 3 days/ week for kids in kindergarten through 6th grade, incorporating homework help, healthy snacks and a hot meal, interest-based clubs, and recreational activities. • The center recently added Junior High Night, which includes a hot meal, open gym, and educational/business mentorship opportunities. Summer Fun at NPC: • Free programs that offer a great way to engage with families, volunteers, and community partners, including Water Week, Sports Camp, and Open Gym. • Community Garden Project, in collabora- tion with Hope for Futures, OHgo, and ECCF, where children and community members help plant vegetables in the spring and harvest them throughout the summer and fall. • Neighborhood block parties at the center in partnership with various community organizations. CHRIS SOMMERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | Chris first worked at NPC as a volunteer when he came home from college in the summers. After graduating and pursuing other nonprofit work out of state, he returned home to Sandusky and joined NPC as its director in December 2020—when the world was still uncertain about COVID-19. His early months on the job were spent dealing with a community center forced to cease all in-person program- ming and a donor-base that was unable to sustain its previous levels of giving. But he and his wife Sarah, a licensed teacher, got busy delivering meals to local families and building relationships with the kids who would eventually come to NPC when it reopened in January 2021. Since then, he and his board of directors have redesigned several of the traditional programs and formed new community partner- ships to ensure that the mission set forth by the organization’s founders continues.