Pawsperity
Pawsperity, formerly known as The GroomingProject, is the pilot program of Empowering the Parent to Empower the Child (EPEC), a 501c3 nonprofit in Kansas City, MO, founded by Natasha Kirsch.
They are devoted to helping impoverished families become self-reliant through job training in the high-demand, high-pay pet grooming trade.
Pawsperity's education-based approach not only financially empowers single parents in poverty by equipping them with credentials in a competitive market, but it also ensures that they focus on improving their family’s future as a whole through parenting and budgeting classes, mental health support, life skills courses, and other needed medical services coordinated with many local organizations.
They train their students in the art of dog grooming, which is an in-demand career in the Kansas City area. Groomers make an annual salary ranging from $35k-$70k. Grooming is a profession where individuals with many barriers to stable employment – including past addiction, criminal records, and incomplete education – can find employment.
Upon completing the six-month grooming training, students can work in one of the area’s 200 pet salons or even start their own grooming business.
Since opening its doors on Troost in 2016, Pawsperity has served over 600 parents and children in the cycle of generational poverty.
With success, they have had a rapidly increasing demand for services that they cannot accommodate in their current facility, which is severely limited in space due to increased staffing to meet the needs of its students.
The new facility will provide the capacity to: renovate a dilapidated building two doors down from the current facility, give its staff appropriate space and privacy, more than double the number of families served each year, triple the number of dogs groomed each day, vastly reducing long appointment wait times, open a market-rate salon staffed by their graduates, and provide doggie daycare services.
Visit Pawsperity’s website to learn more, volunteer, hire a groomer, or donate to their capital campaign.
Website: thegroomingproject.org