AMIkids may shutdown due to changes in state non-profit funding

A magical moment cut short.

“I think they felt it thru the entire program that’s there’s going to be this shift,” said Jeffrey Jean-Jacques, executive director of AMIKids Southwest Florida.

It is a shift that will change a 30-year program for at-risk kids in Lee County.

“There was some funding restructuring done at the Tallahassee level,” Jean-Jacques said.

“Thru budget cuts,” said Cole Peacock, on the board of directors of AMIkids Southwest Florida, “certain programs didn’t get funded.”

Those changes in Tallahassee mean AMIkids is without $75,000 and their facility-based program changes, too.

Jean-Jacques said they would have to change the way the organization models its program and the kids. Their first goal is to raise $75,000, which he said it desperately needs.

On Wednesday evening, big donors are expected at a soiree at Nevermind Grill and Bar in Cape Coral.

“Very kind people and soft hearts and their mission,” Peacock said. “They’ll be able to find the money to move forward.”

It has to find a source of capital because for AMIkids moving forward is the only way to keep serving their kids.

“They all move forward; they are all better people when they leave,” Peacock said. “They all have big smiles on graduation.”