Movement 10K winner helps just about everyone
A $10,000 check from the Movement Foundation will soon help an organization provide aid to scores of women living without shelter in one of the country's hottest cities.
Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, a Phoenix-based nonprofit that offers a host of services to the homeless, orphaned, abused and disabled, is the latest winner of the Movement 10K Challenge. The campaign, which started earlier this year, aims to bestow $10,000 to charities and nonprofits significant to Movement Mortgage employees.
To nominate a charity of their choice, Movement team members can submit a short video about the organization they want to benefit. A committee then chooses a winner each month based on how the money will be used to bring light, life and hope to those in need.
Julianna Clayton, a team lead with Movement's Thrive division in Tempe, Ariz., nominated the group. She became aware of its work when her fiancé took an internship there while getting his master's degree in social work. Thrive helps promote and maintain Movement's culture through initiatives and projects designed to spur employee engagement.
Clayton says she was impressed with the nonprofit's expansive range of services, which include providing meals, shelter, rental assistance and tutoring to people in crisis. It sponsors a program that gives parents tools to prepare their children for school. And it runs a center designed to resettle thousands of refugees who arrive in the U.S. each year.
They go from loving on these children all the way up through loving on the senior citizens and everybody in between," Clayton says.
How will Movement help?
Most of the Movement grant will help the group purchase a new van to shuttle homeless women to and from various churches. There, they can spend the night, eat a hot meal, take refuge from Arizona's blistering heat and work with a case manager who helps them find housing, says Connie Phillips, the nonprofit's president and CEO.
The van the group uses now has over 160,000 miles, Phillips says, and “it's starting to really show its age.”
Movement's contribution "will be something that will continue to provide safety and support for people, day-by-day," she says.
Clayton, a former teacher, lauds the group for the medley of care it gives to so many different people. But she admits the organization's commitment to helping students resonates with her most.
Such was the case at a recent event where children visited literacy centers and pet a live bird. In the crowd stood a shy little girl — one who, Clayton says, barely spoke and had trouble engaging with others.
That is, until she met the bird.
"She was so intrigued by the bird," Clayton recalls. "I got to watch her come to life with all the activities that were there. Just watching her come to life was really meaningful."
