Gratitude for a year of growth and progress

Thanks to the support of our community this year, children gained strong foundations for learning and parents parents gained financial literacy and skills to improve their situation. As more families faced housing instability across Massachusetts, your gifts provided the steady ground families need to build a sustainable life.

With a waitlist of over 200 children, this fall we’re opening two additional classrooms and a new gross motor space. This expansion allowed us to alleviate our waitlist by serving additional families, bringing our total capacity to 265 children attending our early education center each day. The new space supports not only physical development through active play, but also nurtures cognitive, social, and emotional growth — helping even more children build the full range of skills they need to thrive.

This is all made possible thanks to the ongoing support of our community. See how this impact helped us accomplish growth and progress this past fiscal year:

• • 165 parents attended on-site courses, including computer classes and financial literacy programs. 83 parents also took part in continuing education programs, including job training, certification, and degree programs to attain better-paying jobs and expand their career opportunities.
• • Meeting the rising needs of food insecurity, we served 115,404 meals and healthy snacks to children in our early education center.
• • We launched a lending library and distributed books to families as part of our dynamic early literacy curriculum, enriching our collection with over 500 new books.

Horizons’ Playspace Program continued to provide much-needed play for children living in shelters across Massachusetts. In every Playspace, children found more than toys and games; they found safety, stability, and trauma-informed, trustworthy care.

• More than 700 volunteer PALs (Playspace Activity Leaders) provided 76,076 hours of play to children living in shelter.

• Our Playspace team hosted 42 workshops in shelters to build parent confidence and help them understand their child’s needs.

• With the changing needs in the shelter system, Horizons was the state’s leading agency providing programming for the youngest children living in shelter. With the closing of hotel-based shelters, we have added Playspaces in many towns across the state including Dennis, Leicester, Lynn, Waltham, Wareham, and West Roxbury.

We are deeply grateful for our communities continued support of our programs and services, which positions us to meet the challenges in the year ahead for young children and families experiencing homelessness. From all of us at Horizons for Homeless Children, thank you for being part of this critical work. We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events: