Program areas at MUW
Community impact: the community impact program carries out Mesa United Way's mission. This program brings Mesa United Way staff together with volunteers, agencies, and companies in Mesa to help members of the community lead better, more self-sufficient lives. Community impact is accomplished through funding agency and grant programs, developing, and executing initiatives, and building relationships between community members. Current initiatives are: 12 books/mesa youth unite program (literacy and hunger intervention for low-income and low-performing children between kindergarten and third grade), americorps (a volunteer service program providing support for foster care initiatives at helens hope chest), Mesa k-ready (a collaborative program offering innovative pre-school solutions), Mesa veterans resource center (resource navigation and essential services provided to veterans through a one-stop-shop center), vita (volunteer income tax assistance program providing free tax return preparation to low- to moderate-income families and individuals), helen's hope chest (clothing for foster and kinship families), and foster360 (resource navigation and homelessness intervention for aging-out foster youth).
Mesa veterans resource center: knowing how to access available resources can be difficult and confusing for veterans. The Mesa veterans resource center (mvrc) helps hundreds of veterans receive the aid they need, including emergency shelter services, employment training, transportation, mental health and substance abuse support, food assistance, basic needs and more. Our goal is to walk alongside these veterans to get them the resources and tools they need to not only get by, but succeed. In this last year, mvrc served 1397 veterans.
Volunteer income tax assitance (vita) program: the vita program is a free tax preparation service for low- and moderate- income people in the community. Mesa United Way has supported vita for many years, but for the last 13 years has been the lead agency for the Mesa program. Volunteers are trained to prepare tax returns and then must pass an internal revenue service (irs) certification test. During the 2021-2022 fiscal year, 110 Mesa United Way vita volunteers contributed over 7300 hours of their time to complete more than 4,800 tax returns. Their efforts returned over $6.9 million in tax refunds to the members of our community who need it most. Over 900 hours of tax preparation services were provided at 14 different sites located in Mesa and chandler. Mesa United Way's vita coalition partners provided the facilities for the vita sites.