Here we are again! It’s December and we are working to close out the year with so many positive memories and accomplishments. It’s the perfect time to reflect on our successes and cast a bit of a vision for 2023.
Here’s a brief spotlight on what we’re proud to have accomplished in 2022.
The Neighborhood Network expanded!
Thanks to grant funding received from the Sedgwick County Developmental Disabilities Organization, GoodLife was able to expand its services into Sedgwick County by launching a new Neighborhood Network for residents there. We hosted an open house in September and we were busting at the seams! It was a perfect kick-off for the opening of our programming, and we’re proud to be serving 16 new residents already in Wichita with another 5 joining our services by the end of January, 2023. Linh Nguyen is our Director of South Kansas services and she would love to connect with you or your loved ones who are interested in learning more about our unique opportunities in Sedgwick, Butler, and Allen counties.
We were awarded Tax Credits for Midnight Farm!
Our beloved Midnight Farm was the proud recipient of 2022 Community Service Tax Credits from the KS Department of Commerce, which offered a 70% Kansas Tax Credit to our donors and enabled us to raise about $215k. We were able to raise all of the funds for our 4th Home at Midnight Farm within 3 months of receiving the award and the excitement prompted our 2022 Year End fundraising campaign to focus on Midnight Farm as well. There’s still time to be a part of this effort and your support is so appreciated! Between these two campaigns, we expect to be able to make incredible improvements to a space that has been a true life-saver during the pandemic and deserves a little extra love this year.
Our GoodLife U team helped more than a dozen agencies expand the capacity and stability of their direct support workforce!
Our support in 2022 alone impacted more than 15 states and nearly 700 individuals served with some powerful outcomes. We’ve analyzed the impact of our approaches and the data speaks for itself. Check out our latest Impact Report and imagine what these results could do for you or your organization. We are now enrolling for the GoodLife U Class of 2023 and would love to work with you.
iLink was invited to present to the Senior Care Task Force at the Kansas State Capitol!
In August, Dr. Mike Strouse and our iLink Technologies team delivered an introduction to our unique service models and gave an iLink demonstration to the Senior Care Task Force who is charged with the long-term care of Kansas seniors who face health and mental health conditions that would impact home and community-based services. GoodLife’s unique services can benefit aging populations and help them remain in their homes longer and our team was proud to help the state house representatives reimagine what’s possible for delivering high quality care at the moment and place of need.
Our programs and services continued to improve!
There have been several milestones achieved this year that improve the lives of the men and women we have the honor of serving. We kicked off a Parent and Guardian Engagement committee to work directly with parents and guardians who share our mission of delivering a good life to their loved ones. The primary goal of the engagement committee is to create a culture of engagement and collaboration, which has allowed us to discover what is working well while also listening for what we can do better. The committee has been very active and most recently did a holiday cookie exchange to provide a tray of cookies to each direct support professional (DSP). We also launched an initiative for supporting the DSPs who are the true backbone of GoodLife—the ones who make our mission possible. Thanks to the support of the Deffenbaugh Foundation, our The GoodLife Employee Engagement and Advocacy Initiative has been designed to focus on specific practices that will improve the quality of life of our direct support workforce, including housing subsidies, student loan repayment strategies, financial and investment counseling, unique benefits packages that fill needed gaps, and much more.
We are really looking forward to big things happening in 2023! We will share more about our vision for 2023 in January, but as always, we invite you to reach out to us to learn more about any of our achievements referenced here. If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for our monthly e-news so that our latest and greatest comes right to your inbox. Want to join our team? GoodLife is hiring and we’d love to connect.
