Making a Difference Together: Spotlight on The Park Place and Our Backpack Drive Partner

By Ron Kimlinger

As we come to the end of our 8th Annual Logisolve Backpack Drive (last day for backpacks is Monday, August 18th), we wanted to share more background on our non-profit partner, The Park Place. We are privileged to work with Bekah Simpson, Executive Director, and her team (https://www.theparkplace-mn.org/copy-of-the-why). Bekah has been instrumental in the significant growth and impact of The Park Place. She kindly provided more background on their organization’s story to help us understand that our donations and volunteering are much appreciated.

The Park Place was initially created to be a safe haven for Latine youth and families to access opportunities in leadership, education, arts, and parent support that they might otherwise have trouble accessing due to financial constraints or language barriers. What started as a small group of eight youth gathering at Powderhorn Park twice a week has turned into a community of more than eighty youth and families accessing over four community-based programs from birth through adulthood.

This journey of walking in community, listening, adapting, and growing has been life-giving not only for our community but also for those of us on staff who feel deeply connected to and passionate about the work of loving our neighborhood well. This year, we are on track to meet our 96% retention rate from previous years, launch our weekly Parent Program for twenty parents, and increase our youth enrollment to sixty kindergarten through 8th-grade youth for our twice-weekly education programs, all while maintaining a budget surplus thanks to our foundation and government partners: Mortenson Family Foundation, Centerpoint Energy Foundation, MN DEED, MN Historical Society, Sheltering Arms Foundation, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.

If there is one thing we have learned in the past year, it is that our work at The Park Place is pivotal to our community. High-quality, consistent, and relational programs are hard to come by, especially ones that offer bilingual services. Sadly, in South Minneapolis, two large programs that our community attended have shut down, and the need for our presence and consistency is even more evident. While we have increased our youth registration to sixty, we have more than twenty-five youth on the waitlist. More importantly, our community is in search of places where they feel safe, secure, and celebrated. We are proud that our community looks to us as that place, and we are committed to continuing to be that space where kids can be kids and parents can get the support they are looking for.

We also have volunteer opportunities with The Park Place, including joining Bekah and her team at one of their after-school STEM/technology sessions. We will also be hosting a “Career Seminar” with The Park Place, led by our Ingenio Capability Leader, Heather Miner. Please connect with Ron Kimlinger (Ron.Kimlinger@Logisolve.com) if you are interested in future volunteer opportunities with The Park Place.

If you wish to donate to The Park Place, you can do so online at https://donorbox.org/program-donation-1. Please let them know you are
with Logisolve when donating.