Southwest Kansas nonprofits showcase services at annual fair

Ariana Wheat, in the black shirt, helps a child paint on a canvas Friday during the nonprofit fair in Garden City. The fair is in its fourth year of promoting nonprofit services in southwest Kansas. (AJ Dome for Kansas Reflector)

GARDEN CITY — The weather was so hot Friday in southwest Kansas, the glue sticks in Ariana Wheat’s crafts bin melted.

Wheat participated in the fourth annual nonprofit fair in Garden City hosted by the Western Kansas Community Foundation. The fair featured more than a dozen nonprofit agencies from the Garden City area to promote local services ranging from mental health support to early childhood education and more.

In the Garden City Arts booth, Wheat hosted an art project that passersby could contribute to by painting circles on various-sized canvases.

Stacie Hahn, the program and marketing director for the Western Kansas Community Foundation, said the fair works just like a job fair, except without employers seeking new hires.

“I think a big part of our community doesn’t recognize how much of the services they partake of are put on by nonprofits,” Hahn said. “This is a great way to share their messages.”

The Western Kansas Community Foundation is a funding agency for civic and philanthropic needs in the region. Hahn said the biggest areas of need she hears about from community residents are housing, child care, mental health care and transportation.

“The thing about nonprofits is, we’re all really good at trying to be connectors and provide the resources that we have but also connect to the rest of the resources available,” Hahn said. “Trying to fulfill the needs of everyone is high on the minds of everybody who works for a nonprofit.”

Katrina Lowry is the early childhood program director for the Russell Child Development Center. The center serves a 13-county area in southwest Kansas, and Lowry has been with the agency for a decade. She said the nonprofit fair is beneficial for visiting with children and their families about the services the agency offers.

“I think the biggest thing that we hear about is we don’t have the capacity that we need for mental health services, particularly for young children in southwest Kansas,” Lowry said.

Lowry and her staff serve a large rural population, including a handful of frontier counties, and she said progress on helping more families in southwest Kansas overcome challenges with child care comes in multiple forms.

“For example, we’ve been piloting a program for the past three years to help parents who are dealing with perinatal depression,” Lowry said. “It’s a smaller program, but we’ve been able to meet some of the mental health needs that way and relieve some pressure on other systems who may have a backup or lack of capacity.”

Kylie Boyd is a trustee with the Finnup Foundation in Garden City. Founded in 1977 by members of the Finnup family, the foundation has provided about $37 million in grants and financial support for community projects to date. One of the foundation’s main focuses is supporting youth services in the area, and Boyd said she and other foundation members are in the early stages of coordinating listening sessions across the city and region to further determine the best use for Finnup Foundation monies.

“How can we learn from those with boots on the ground, and ask, ‘What are truly the needs here?’ So that’s really a focus of our foundation moving forward,” Boyd said.

In the Garden City Arts booth, Wheat said community art programs are growing in popularity among young families, and they are proving helpful for people who may be experiencing emotional stress.

“Just like food feeds our bodies, art feeds our soul,” Wheat said. “Art works as a really great outlet for those big emotions. It’s a way to express ourselves, even when we may not be able to connect in person, we’re able to connect through art.”

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