Ethnos is a non-profit organization that empowers and improves the lives of at-risk children and families. Through asset building, relationally meeting the family's needs with a message of hope. We see the transformation that begins with children and spreads through families.
Every child in Ethnos Kids Club will be personally picked up and dropped off at their home by a staff member or volunteer. Many of these children have been a part of the Kids Club for over five years. We have seen children who were once unable to sit quietly through class become our class helpers. Children who treated their fifty-four-acre community (Cassiano Homes) with little respect now take pride in keeping the grounds free of trash and free of graffiti. If you ask many of our children what they want to be when they grow up, they will tell you, “To be a yellow shirt or to start a Kids Club in another community.”
Kids Club is a place for children to have a safe learning environment. We also provide tutoring, mentoring, recreational activities, character-building, feeding, and clothing to our children. This is a totally FREE program for the children of Cassiano Homes.
Eight years ago, each Ethnos staff member quit their jobs to devote their lives to full-time mentoring over four hundred children. Ethnos is on a mission to change and better the lives of as many children as we can reach.
In order to accomplish this task, we know it takes one on one contact on a daily basis. We also know that FUN opens the lines of communication and trust.
Some of the things that we do is to take our children out of their environment to see life outside of their fifty-four acres. To help create a new paradigm, we take field trips to the Capital in Austin, overnight camps in the Hill country, downtown San Antonio to visit the Alamo, boat rides to see the Christmas lights along the River Walk, River City Mall, San Antonio Zoo, The Quadrangle, Yana Guana Garden, our neighborhood fire department, San Antonio police academy, Bomb-sniffing dog training, DoSeum, Children’s Museum, San Antonio Silver Stars games, concerts, the circus and much more.
Each year we supply and hand deliver 1,200 Christmas stockings, conduct Easter egg hunts, deliver Thanksgiving dinners, celebrate birthdays with gifts, make hospital visits, conduct sidewalk tutoring, supply emergency food and clothing, attend school functions, teach swimming, have an annual coat, glove and hat drive, we deliver much-needed diapers, baby clothes and baby necessities to our moms, we supply personal hygiene for our families, blankets and even beds for our children to sleep in. we attend birthday parties, and have arts and craft days.
Nursing students from the University Health System came and taught character building with puppets, then taught our children puppetry. We also had the world’s strongest woman demonstrate acts of feat while teaching on good character and the importance of staying in school.
We try to meet the needs our children and families may have whether it is physical or emotional.
Ethnos does so much more than can be put into words. The love that flows so freely between us and our families cannot be pinned. What greater joy is there than to lay our lives down freely for our families.