Hope Initiative of the Denver Street School

Thank you for faithfully standing with us! For the past thirty-six years, together, we’ve watched God change the lives of hundreds of at-risk students who have walked through our doors. And as a partner, we wanted to share an important update personally.

 Today, we are officially announcing the merger of Hope Academy with West Campus. While it isn’t what we had expected to do, it does offer an exciting opportunity to combine resources to meet the unique needs of our student body. We’ve also gained some important information about serving young female survivors of sexual trauma, and this, as well as consultation with industry professionals and prayer, helped solidify our decision to join campuses. 

We would greatly appreciate your continued partnership as we venture into this new chapter. 

 We are so grateful for your generous support! Unless we hear from you, we will plan to direct your monthly donation to our Hope Initiative at West Campus.

The six years we served Hope Academy students opened our eyes to the complexity of working with this demographic. While we were fully funded, newly accredited, staffed with excellence, in a safe location, and filled with the deep desire to be part of their healing, we realized something important. 

The Hope Academy model was spot-on in providing extensive trauma-specific counseling in a safe, loving, and nurturing environment, but these girls want to feel “normal” again. And part of that means attending a school that looks and feels like most other high schools do, with halls and classrooms filled with students.

As we processed how to best meet this need, we felt a stirring to merge campuses and resources to offer a stronger program and support structure for all our students.

 We can now:

• Provide a more robust community in a safe school setting.
• Support both female and male victims of abuse, exploitation, and trafficking through our services and resources. 
• Grow and foster a school-wide culture of helping all students move from victims to survivors and eventually to thrivers.
• Direct resources to support a more well-rounded menu of counseling services for our students. 
• Create and implement prevention programming for the entire student body because all DSS students are at risk of being abused, exploited, and trafficked.

 We aren’t closing the door on helping those marked by sexual trauma. Instead, we are expanding our ability to impact more of them in positive and meaningful ways.   

 Moving forward, we will:

 Continue to build community relationships and partnerships that will allow us to serve our entire student body best.

• Receive FBI and other community referrals of sexual trauma survivors ready to return to school.
• Perform intake assessments to help identify students who need help. 
• Provide a trauma-informed environment, staff, and services.
• Work with outside teams on student case management.
• Implement programming that will support our new emphasis on the prevention of exploitation on many different levels.
• Workplace Readiness
• Entrepreneurship
• Advocacy  

By merging the two campuses, we will be offering survivors the opportunity to deepen their roots, establish a new life routine, and move forward all while strengthening the overall DSS program. It’s a win-win all the way around!

We would greatly appreciate your continued partnership as we venture into this new chapter. It’s been a crazy fifteen months, but we’ve seen God sharpen our program in countless ways. We feel certain He is in this merge and believe student survivors of sexual trauma will benefit significantly from it. 

 I will be sharing more with you as the vision comes together. In the meantime, please reach out if you have questions. I’m always available and would appreciate any opportunity to connect. Again, thank you for partnering with our mission to bring HOPE to struggling students in our community. We simply could not do this without you.

Thank you again!