Mission Statement
Our mission is to help meet the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of inner-city children and families. Our vision is to keep reaching more neighborhoods every year, helping to create healthy families and communities where neighbors experience new hope for life free from violence, abuse and neglect, changing a generation – one child at a time.
What we do
Its 3:30 on a school day afternoon, and the playground is starting to fill with children. A brightly painted step-van pulls up, and workers go out to quickly lower one side into a stage. Within 30 minutes, children are sitting in front of the stage, watching as team members act out a funny skit with a strong message about a boy who doesn’t listen to his mom and gets in trouble with the police. Parents are lined up behind the van, accepting bags of groceries, clothing or hygiene products, receiving instruction from the Bible on how to live their lives, and encouragement that God loves them and he is on their side.
In a sea of disarray, dysfunction and apathy, Metro Kidz programs are an island of safe, fun, friendship and wholesome instruction. Going where too few dare to bring what too few have, Metro Kidz holds programs in cities’ most dangerous and challenging neighborhoods, in housing projects and neighborhoods with the bleakest outlook for children’s health and family well being.
Metro Kidz International is a non-profit organization that reaches out to children and families. In 1992 Metro Kidz Los Angeles began as an outreach to the disadvantaged children of Watts, California. Today Metro Kidz reaches hundreds of children every week. Metro Kidz is an initiative that has worked in the most difficult neighborhoods Los Angeles, South Bay, Peru and various North and South American cities.
We help put that purpose in action, encouraging and following up with each child during our weekly visitation programs – programs that are consistent and dependable. Metro Kidz ministry team members make a weekly visitation to each child’s home, getting to know the family and understanding the dynamics of each child’s situation. The Visitation program is a tool to discover the child or family’s additional needs and an opportunity to pray for those needs and find resources to help meet those needs. That translates into visiting children in a hundred homes a week in Los Angeles alone, encouraging their growth in faith and life.
We are dedicated to instilling universally acceptable values in children whose harsh personal environment and volatile neighborhoods render them at great risk of embracing a value system totally contrary to civil society. The compassionate lifestyle we promote, the life skills we teach and the basic principles we instill, are not only an invaluable asset to individual children, but also essential to the future of civil society itself.
Board Members
Graciela Toriz
Craig Jones
Debbie Osberg-Ruiz
Teresa Thomas
Aida Gonzales
