Long-Term, Multi-Faceted Partnership with NPHY Includes More Than $1.7 Million in Cumulative Sands Cares Funding to Address Southern Nevada’s High Youth Homelessness Rate
SOURCE: Las Vegas Sands
DESCRIPTION:
LAS VEGAS, July 19, 2021 /3BL Media/ – Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) today announced continuation of its multi-year partnership with Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth (NPHY) with a donation of $300,000 to aid Southern Nevada’s most vulnerable youth. The Sands Cares funding will help NPHY strengthen services and pursue long-term solutions to help make the incidence of youth homelessness rare, brief, non-recurring and equitably addressed, as outlined in the Southern Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness.
Commemorating NPHY’s 20th anniversary in 2021 and its outstanding track record of leadership in the fight to end youth homelessness, Sands’ investment focuses on expansion and support of key NPHY programs, resources to increase organizational capability and the addition of housing capacity for youth experiencing homelessness. Since prioritizing youth homelessness as a primary Sands Cares initiative in 2015, Sands has donated more than $1,770,000 to NPHY.
The 2021 Sands Cares cumulative donation includes $100,000 designated to close out the NPHY Housing Expansion Campaign, which will enable NPHY to offset rising real estate costs to acquire the planned transitional housing facility. This funding is critical in helping NPHY address changing market conditions that had created a shortfall with the campaign’s original funding goal. Sands previously donated $100,000 as a seed investor in NPHY’s Housing Expansion Campaign in 2019 and engaged the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation as the other seed partner with the establishment of a $100,000 matching grant from the foundation to encourage the community’s participation in the capital campaign.
The remainder of the 2021 Sands Cares donation is earmarked for production of the Southern Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit; expansion of NPHY’s nighttime staffing model for its Safe Place, emergency shelter and transitional housing programs; and infrastructure support for critical operational areas such as grants administration, finance and facilities management.
Current Sands Cares funding areas build on strategic initiatives established over the course of the partnership with NPHY, which have included helping NPHY kick off the Movement to End Youth Homelessness, establishing and co-presenting the annual Southern Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit and being a primary funder of the resources to facilitate and develop the Southern Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness.
Sands also has consistently supported NPHY’s core offerings such as its emergency shelter, drop-in center and transitional program. According to NPHY, this long-term commitment has enabled the organization to grow exponentially and expand service offerings in multiple areas, including increasing drop-in center hours, doubling emergency shelter beds and strengthening wraparound services such as therapy and educational support for young people experiencing homelessness. The partnership has enabled NPHY to directly impact the lives of more than 1,900 individual youth through critical services supported by Sands.
“Without Sands, we would not have been able to establish the Movement and Summit – yet Sands’ involvement as a catalyst behind expansion of our offerings is much deeper than these most visible programs,” said Arash Ghafoori, executive director of NPHY. “Sands has helped us grow our back-end infrastructure to sustainably support program expansion - a crucial component to successful nonprofit management that is often overlooked. The company has served as a true partner in the fight to end youth homelessness in Southern Nevada, not only as a donor, but as an investor and thought partner in our work to move the needle on this devastating issue in our community.”
Another facet of Sands’ long-term engagement with NPHY is the organization’s participation in the invitation-only Sands Cares Accelerator, a signature Sands Cares initiative that supports rising nonprofits in expanding their capability to make greater impact in the community. NPHY will graduate from the three-year Sands Cares Accelerator at the end of 2021 having achieved future sustainability through growth and refinement of its operational infrastructure; diversification in offerings, especially in the area of advocacy and awareness; and initiation of a strategic planning process to crystallize the organization’s future makeup.
Last year, Sands Cares provided NPHY with $200,000 in essential funding during the height of the pandemic to maintain operations as well as accommodate emerging needs as NPHY worked to establish stop-gap measures for youth without a safety net from family, school, employers and other support systems that were suspended or because of COVID-19. The Sands Cares funding was also critical as NPHY faced intense operational impact with the loss of in-person volunteer and increased volatility of donor support and other resources affected by the pandemic.
“We are deeply committed to impacting the incidence of youth homelessness in the Las Vegas Valley, and NPHY has been our strategic and valued partner in leading that charge,” said Ron Reese, senior vice president of global communications and corporate affairs at Sands. “Our continued investment is representative of the tremendous results we’ve seen NPHY achieve for our community’s vulnerable youth, as well as its leadership in developing long-term solutions to address the issue. This partnership has been one of the most impactful Sands Cares initiatives we’ve undertaken.”
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About Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS)
Las Vegas Sands is the world’s preeminent developer and operator of world-class Integrated Resorts. We deliver unrivaled economic benefits to the communities in which we operate.
Sands created the meetings, incentives, convention and exhibition (MICE)-based Integrated Resort. Our industry-leading Integrated Resorts provide substantial contributions to our host communities including growth in leisure and business tourism, sustained job creation and ongoing financial opportunities for local small and medium-sized businesses.
Our properties include The Venetian Resort and Sands Expo in Las Vegas, and the iconic Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Through majority ownership in Sands China Ltd., we have developed the largest portfolio of properties on the Cotai Strip in Macao, including The Venetian Macao, The Plaza and Four Seasons Hotel Macao, The Londoner Macao and The Parisian Macao, as well as the Sands Macao on the Macao Peninsula.
Sands is dedicated to being a good corporate citizen, anchored by the core tenets of serving people, planet and communities. We deliver a great working environment for our team members worldwide, drive social impact through the Sands Cares community engagement and charitable giving program and lead in environmental performance through the award-winning Sands ECO360 global sustainability program. To learn more, please visit www.sands.com.
About Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth
NPHY is the most comprehensive service provider for the thousands of homeless youth in Southern Nevada, serving hundreds of youth through our core programs and touching the lives of thousands more through outreach each year. NPHY’s programs stabilize homeless teens’ lives, meeting their immediate needs and providing a safe, supportive environment and a path to self-sufficiency. Through our work with homeless youth, NPHY creates productive, healthy adults who contribute to society. Strengthening and complementing our high-quality direct services for homeless youth, NPHY is dedicated to advocating with and for the Vegas Valley’s homeless youth population and serves as a leader in systems-level efforts to eliminate homelessness among Nevada’s youth. For more information or to support our life-changing work for homeless youth, please visit www.nphy.org.
Contacts:
Las Vegas Sands
Kristin Koca
Kristin.Koca@sands.com
702.414.3218
NPHY
Lanette Rivera
lanette@nphy.org
702.688.1013
KEYWORDS: NYSE:LVS, Las Vegas Sands, NPHY, Nevada Homelessness Project
