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- 9 - accessHealthNews.net November 2023 Volume 10 | Issue No. 78 The people who know best how to serve the complex needs of any community are the very people within it, as Friends of Yates and its director and chief executive officer LaDora Lattimore know well. As the season of Giving Tuesday nears, encouraging communities to celebrate and give back to the organizations which serve them, Lattimore sat for an interview with Grace to share the powerful passion behind Friends of Yates' work. Friends of Yates is a non-for-profit organization that was born out of racism in the era when Black individuals could not go to the YWCA. Friends of Yates is a metamorphosis of Yates Friends YWCA. The organization was a branch of the Y for 69 years and severed ties in 1982 as Friends of Yates, when Lattimore was recruited to be the branch director of the Y. "I worked for nine years at the mental health center prior to taking this position, and there were some things that I felt like needed to happen before I left my comfortable position with the mental health center," Lattimore said. They transitioned away from the YWCA, and Friends of Yates became the legal entity of their journey. In 1979, she organized Friends of Yates, although the group did not break away until 1982. Friends of Yates started the first battered women's shelter in 1980 when they were still part of the Y. "I grew up in Yates Branch YWCA as a child," Lattimore said. "I went to their summer camp. My grandmother was on the founding board of Yates Branch YWCA, so as a little girl, she and my mom kept us involved in Yates, and then I grew up, went on away to college, came back, and still was involved with Yates Branch YWCA, but as a volunteer." Although the organization broke away in 1982 as a part of the YWCA, it still remains a part of the rich history of what Friends of Yates stands for today. Programs of Friends of Yates Friends of Yates created the first and only comprehensive battered women's program in Kansas City, Kansas. The battered women's program features court advocacy, economic advocacy, health advocacy, education advocacy, and comp housing advocacy, among other things — a truly comprehensive wraparound set of services. When the program started in 1982, it succeeded in offering a safe haven, but Friends of Yates found that to cut down on the recidivism rate of the individuals in their care, survivors had to be prepared with tools to be successful and empowered in their journey forward. That realization prompted the organization to develop its array of related supportive programs. "The Governor's Grants Program and PFA, which is under the Kansas Attorney General's Office—we get a lot of funding, but they have been very clear on giving programs opportunities to respond to community needs," Lattimore said. "Battered women in urban communities versus rural communities is a different approach, and they allow programs to do what's best for their communities. The services that I just named are what we felt was very important to our community: child care, nutritious feeding, all of that." In addition to the domestic violence program, because domestic violence is connected to crime, Friends of Yates has a crime awareness program that they do every April or May which includes a candlelight service for those that have fallen by homicide and other tragic means, and a panel. READ MORE "Battered women in urban communities versus rural communities is a different approach, and they allow programs to do what's best for their communities." - LaDora Lattimore Friends of Yates CEO

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