A Lee's Summit youth center, focused on helping at-risk teens, may have to close its doors.
Pro Deohas served 2,500 teens since it first began in 2009, but now it faces a severe financial emergency.
"We've had to cut everything back to bare bones," said Kylie Ewing, co-founder of the non-profit. "So right now, there's no above-and-beyond programming that's going on. It's literally warm bodies coming to build relationships with teenagers and that is the extent that we can keep the doors open for."
Ewing and her husband Andy started Pro Deo after seeing a great need in the community.
"There were teens that didn't have a place to go," she said. "Didn't have anything to do."
It started in a park where teens were spending their time, then moved to the couples’ home before outgrowing that space. Now, the non-profit holds after school and weekend programming for teens 7th through 12th grades, at Chipman Commons in Lee's Summit.
"A lot of our kids are having to be adults at home as well," said Ewing. "They're old enough to make their own decisions, they're old enough to have intelligent conversations, but they're also the ones that are experiencing a lot of peer pressure."
The teens’ needs range from those wanting friends to spend time with, to those with drug addiction or victims of sexual or physical abuse.
"You have kids that don't have food and they're looking for the food aspect," said Ewing. "It's truly meeting each kid in the trench because not a single teenager has the same story. People always say, well you work with at risk teens. If you actually know teenagers – I have yet to meet a teenager who is not at risk for something."
Halena Rhodenberry started going to Pro Deo when she was 16-years-old.
"I didn't have the best family life," she said. "I started doing drugs. I didn't feel like there was a purpose."
Through the program, Rhodenberry got help with her homework and was assigned a counselor to meet monthly, but for her, the life-changing factor was the love she felt walking in the doors.
"Just coming here made me feel – it was unconditional love. Something I'd never felt before," Rhodenberry said.
"We're the people that show up in the good, the bad, the ugly and all of those places in between and we love them even still," Ewing said.
Pro Deo now needs to raise $150,000 by September 15th or close its doors to those most in need.
"It's going to be hard to tell the teenagers they can't come," Ewing said. "I don't want to see that day come, but I know it's the reality of where we are. I'm still praying for a miracle."
After an emergency fundraiser, Pro Deo has raised $70,000 towards their goal. They hope to raise the rest in time to keep the doors open for teens like Rhodenberry who say the program changed their lives.
"If I wouldn't have come here, I wouldn't have stopped doing drugs," she said. "I wouldn't have graduated high school. I wouldn't have even thought about college. I honestly would not be here today if it weren't for them."
To learn more about Pro Deo click here.
