Like old friends who grew up together: that’s the Eden Prairie Community Foundation and PROP.
So, we join with others in Eden Prairie to say happy 45th birthday to Eden Prairie’s social-services safety net, the folks who have provided food, hope, and community in residents’ times of need.
You can learn a lot of specifics about the impact of PROP on the organization’s website – impressive numbers of people helped with food, employment, and housing until they’re back on their feet, so to speak – but let’s focus for a moment on the overall idea of having a community safeguard like PROP.
You wouldn’t know it by Eden Prairie’s reputation as a well-to-do community, but poverty here has grown in recent years, just as it’s grown in most suburbs. The recession that hit the U.S. in about 2008 wreaked havoc across age groups, incomes, and nationalities, and the effects are still being felt. For all the perceived wealth in Eden Prairie, there are a lot of folks who are just one credit-card payment or mortgage payment away from needing serious help.
Through it all, PROP has been an organization on which residents-in-need can lean. We at the Eden Prairie Community Foundation know this because we have a strong, 35-year link with PROP, and have awarded grants to the organization multiple times – tens of thousands of dollars that continue to this day, including dollars through our Youth Initiative that help pay for after-school activity scholarships awarded by PROP. (Note the photo above, from our 2016 EP Gives event, showing PROP Executive Director Janet Palmer receiving a grant from the Foundation’s Doug Loon.)
We also gather with PROP’s executive director on a monthly basis, learning about community needs so that the Foundation can respond, if needed.
So, we know the value that PROP provides. To the PROP staff and volunteers we say: Happy birthday! You help make Eden Prairie great by providing social services to thousands of our friends and neighbors each year.
