Thankful for community support

In this season of Thanksgiving, we at Four Oaks are grateful for the community's overwhelming support of our TotalChild initiative and funding campaign.

You responded with generosity to the TotalChild concept of helping children in crisis achieve stability and success by addressing their basic needs, education and work, family and community.

Your gifts have put our TotalChild campaign over the top, exceeding the initial goal of $6 million. [disclosure: The Gazette Foundation, funded by The Gazette Company, is a TotalChild capital campaign donor.]

Thanks to your gifts, Four Oaks can stabilize and provide long-term support to some 1,400 disadvantaged Linn County children until they graduate from high school.

Campaign gifts, combined with private investments, are also transforming a blighted 18-block area of Cedar Rapids' Wellington Heights neighborhood into a safe place where families can afford housing, want to live and have a better chance of reaching success.

Single-family homeownership is key to the life of a core neighborhood. As of today, 89 properties have been purchased, 58 fully rehabbed and many families are homeowners or experiencing stable housing for the first time.

Our goal of $6 million seemed ambitious at the outset, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 flood. But thanks to the dedicated leadership of campaign co-chairs Chris and Suzy DeWolf and Kyle and Susan Skogman and their team of more than 40 campaign volunteers, our TotalChild vision for helping children resonated throughout the entire community.

Support from the City of Cedar Rapids, Linn County, from housing partners, churches, and community partners like the Wellington Heights neighborhood Association, Habitat for Humanity and individuals helped Four Oaks do far more than we could have done alone.

We are grateful for this support.

' Anne Gruenewald is president and CEO of Four Oaks, a child welfare and behavioral health agency. Comments: (319) 364-0259; info@fouroaks.org