The peace. love. swap & PLAY! is a grassroots, non-profit community center committed to supporting families by offering a safe, engaging and enriching space. Our center hosts an indoor play space for children ages 0 to 12, a family lending library, the popular Swap Boutique, playgroups, birthday parties, event space and classes for families to support healthy lifestyles. All of these offerings are available for an affordable one-time fee or sliding-scale monthly membership, or by work trade for use. We also provide space for our community partners to meet with and support for their clients, such as KidzKount Head Start, Foothill Healthy Babies, The Food Bank, MOPS, LaLeche League, The Nest, local midwives/doulas, homeschoolers and more.
The Center currently supports itself through volunteers, use fees, membership dues, event rentals, and support from our community partners.
The first part of our project would address the need for a paid staff for one month who will help us reach out to families to increase our monthly memberships, drop ins, punch card purchases and party/event rentals. The summer months are a slow time for us as families are often on holiday and our Spring fundraiser did not meet the needs of cover the difference. A paid staff member would also ensure the space is clean, safe, organized and welcoming to families. In order to reach and engage more families, the Center would like to hire this employee at $10/hr, 20-40 hours a week, to work on outreach to more families with children under 6 years old, especially Spanish-speaking families, low-income families, rural families, single-parent families, and apartment-living families.
The second aspect of this project would improve the Centers facilities. Currently we have one large indoor space that houses all that we offer. We would also like to offer families an outdoor play space and learning garden for parents and children to learn how to grow and cook nutritionally rich food. We would like to improve our private indoor space for parent support groups, classes, breastfeeding, and use by community agencies with their clients by adding a desk and 2 couches. We also need better clothing rack solutions for our popular Swap Boutique so that we can increase storage.
We will be lauching our online campaign as we improve our website and marketing materials at the same time. We will also be attending several community events to get the word out. We will be making phone calls, sending emails, facebook messaging, hosting ongoing raffles and events at our location.
To improve the lives of children, parents and our community.