Earlier this month, our local St. Jude’s Ranch for Children received a grant for $3 million dollars from Clark County to assist them with the building of their planned Healing Center for Child Victims of Sex Trafficking.
This has been in the planning stages for quite a while. A number of neighborhood meetings were held back in 2018, which we told you about HERE, to get feedback from residents.
The Planning Commission and the City Council have also already given approval of the concept combined with community feedback, for the facility that will be built on their 12 acres of open land at St. Jude’s Ranch.
Here’s some information directly from the press release:
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children’s Healing Center will help a growing victim population that has been enslaved and has nowhere else to turn. For more than a half century, the charity has been providing services to abused, neglected and homeless children and youth. This residential program is a natural extension of its programs and will provide a nurturing and therapeutic environment, survivor advocates and other critical services to child victims of sex trafficking. It will be the only residential treatment center, with these specific treatment housing options, in Southern Nevada and one of the few in the entire country.…This comes on the tail of the release of an eight-year study highlighting this serious public, social and mental health concern for the most vulnerable children in Las Vegas.
We spoke to Christina Vela, the Chief Executive Officer at St. Jude’s locally, and she tells us that the entire project cost is expected to be $15 million, and with these newly received funds, this puts them at a total raised so far of $10 million. Of those funds already secured, they have come from both private and public resources. We the public, can also still donate as they still need more funding, and donations can start as low as $100. You can learn more about how to give on their web site HERE.
Their next steps at this point will be to get a formal RFP completed (Request for Proposal) for the work with the aim of hiring a General Contractor. Ms. Vela tells us that they have taken all feedback from area residents into consideration in their plans.
We’re sad that this kind of a facility is needed in the world today, but given that there are children in our state that need to be rescued, we’re glad to see this local facility getting what it needs to move forward. We wish them well.
