Inland Empire United Way, 91730
Contact Person: Shirli Driz
Email: sdriz@ieuw.org
Website: www.ieuw.org

Mission:
Inland Empire United Way (IEUW)'s mission is to engage the community to improve the lives and futures of those in need by strategically investing in education, health and financial stability. We envision a caring community where everyone has access to needed resources to succeed.

Activities:
IEUW is a regional leader in serving children, youth, individuals and families across not just one, but many, co-occurring issues. Established in 1992 originally as Mt. Baldy United Way, IEUW is an independent 501c3 and has merged with other United Ways over nearly 3 decades to impact a larger footprint of Inland Empire residents. Our service area today includes the region from Pomona Valley East of Kellogg Hill to Fontana, the areas of Redlands and Yucaipa, and San Bernardino County’s High Desert. Through agreements with other United Ways, we also serve the entirety of San Bernardino County as the official operator of the 24/7 hotline 2-1-1 and its specialized programs, from peer reentry and veteran support to the county-wide homeless coordinated-entry system.\\Once solely a re-grantor to local nonprofit agencies, IEUW has, for over 10 years, directly implemented our own initiatives and programs to leverage our influence as a United Way and fill in gaps of unmet need. We serve over 260,000 people each year through our combined programs that, on their own, could be considered the scale of some small nonprofits. We focus on providing access to residents who are under-resourced, under-served and under-represented, working together to move them from poverty to self-sufficiency.\\IEUW’s year-round programs include: Kids Pack (weekly food bags to under-resourced children), School Tools (free school supplies to low-income classrooms), ieReads (early childhood literacy through volunteerism), Launch Point and Promise Scholars (college and career readiness), ieVolunteers (mobilizing community volunteers), and United Way 211 (county-wide 24/7 hotline for information and referral to needed resources). Within United Way 211 are also several specialized programs, including CES Pathways Home (San Bernardino County’s homeless Coordinated-Entry System, 211 Careers (employment case management and system navigation for unemployed residents to obtain meaningful jobs at a living wage), 211 Reentry & 211 Veterans (peer reentry and peer veteran specialists supporting system navigation for the previously incarcerated, veterans and their families), and Family & Child Specialists and services.\\All programs are operated from our program facilities in Rancho Cucamonga and Victorville, from which services are delivered collaboratively across the Inland Empire—particularly to those in under-resourced neighborhoods that are identified as low-income, underrepresented and marginalized. Together, our programs meet short-term basic needs of those in crisis while moving the needle to collaboratively and respectfully break the cycle of poverty.

Achievements:
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS\Beginning in 2016, we developed and created two new programs to meet observed needs in our community. The Inland Empire has one of the highest rates of disconnected youth ages 16-24 who neither work nor attend school, as well as one of the lowest early literacy attainment rates. Our first new program is Launch Point - initially piloted on the evidence-based model of Promise Scholars, a college readiness program that we operate in partnership with the Ontario-Montclair School District; we adapted the model to provide career readiness and fill in gaps of unmet need within other existing programs and school curricula. In the 2018-19 school year, Launch Point provided job fairs, job readiness workshops, mock interviews, and career field trips impacting 855 youth in Pomona and the High Desert. The second new program is ieReads - inspiring a love of reading before third grade, the program promotes early childhood literacy through volunteerism across our service region. In the 2018-19 school year, our story time events, book drives, and special events such as Read Across America Day served 3,400 early grade readers. ieReads also provided 2,000 under-resourced students with new age-appropriate books to fight summer learning loss. During the last 5 years, our Kids Pack and School Tools programs both celebrated many years of serving our community - Kids Pack celebrated 15 years in 2018 and has grown to serve over 2,100 students each year. School Tools celebrated 13 years in 2019 and annually serves over 83,000 students. All of our programs are intrinsically community-based and, simply in the last year, we engaged over 2,500 volunteers to serve over 6,500 hours.\\Another notable achievement for our Community Programs was a merger with the Desert Communities United Way in 2015. Over the last five years, we have expanded all of our programs to serve the High Desert, and have brought more programming to the region than existed there prior to our expansion. In 2019, we relocated the Desert Communities office from Apple Valley to a new location in Victorville. This allowed us to establish a new School Tools Teacher Resource Center bringing free school supplies to teachers in low-income schools, and a new Kids Pack Center to pack and distribute weekly food to homeless and under-resourced students local to the High Desert. Annually, our Community Programs across our service region serve over 85,000 children and youth. As a United Way, we have also made Community Impact Grants totaling $2,600,500 to more than 40 grantees from 2015-2019.\\211 SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY\United Way 211 has expanded rapidly over the last five years to serve over 185,000 residents annually. As a nationally accredited call center, we are the central source for providing free and confidential information and referrals for all health and human services in San Bernardino County through our 211sb.org website, easy call line ‘2-1-1’, and texting to 898211. We answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with live, specially trained Community Resource Advisors. In 2016, we became the official operator for the county-wide homeless coordinated-entry system (CES Pathways Home), and since inception have hired 7 staff members focused on serving community members in homelessness. Over 1,100 families have been housed in the last five years. In 2018, we established a new program, 211 Careers, to work with a wide array of partners to move families towards financial independence via employment. We received a $150,000 investment from the State of California for 211 Careers in 2019, and since April last year have facilitated hiring of over 25 individuals and provided workshops to over 150 job seekers. We have also expanded our Re-Entry Assistance services for community members who are returning from incarceration. We offer peer support specialists dedicated to helping re-entry individuals make connections with the community, employment, housing, educational, and many other resources to ensure a successful return. Last year, we answered 1,430 calls and referred 800 individuals to a re-entry peer specialist. In 2019, 211 Re-Entry received a multi-year grant of $499,941 from the State of California for re-entry warm hand-off services. Other notable accomplishments include hiring specialists for CalFresh enrollment over the phone (over 150 applications monthly), ConnectIE in partnership with the Inland Empire Health Plan, and the addition of our Homeless Health Outreach Specialist to CES efforts. Annually, our Children & Family Services and Preschool Services specialists also impact over 5,000 families each year to promote childhood and family safety, permanency, and well-being.

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