Mission
To invest in the potential of children through family stability.
Vision
Thriving children, strengthened families, and connected communities.
Strategy
The Siemer Institute’s major strategies include: improving family financial and housing stability while creating opportunities for families to thrive and for students to achieve academic success.
History
As a school teacher Barbara Siemer saw how harmful homelessness and school instability were to students and classrooms. These experiences inspired Al and Barbara Siemer to develop a program in 2003 with the United Way of Sarasota and Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the Suncoast to address this issue.
Based on the success of this original work, the Siemer Institute was launched in 2011 to take this program across the nation with the intention of preventing family homelessness and reducing school instability among low-income families. Since 2011, the Siemer Institute has developed partnerships in 64 communities across the country.
The Siemer Institute leads this work nationally from Columbus, Ohio, and United Way affiliates across the country oversee our programs locally. The network actively participates in a collective impact model while sharing best practices that align successes with the intent of creating national change. Siemer Institute partners with United Way because we believe it is the lead organization in each community that brings meaningful change by identifying community needs and assembling resources and partners to address those needs.
