Basic Needs

Many families often forgo basic needs when compelled to choose among housing, food, childcare, healthcare or transportation expenses. United Way of the Midlands works to ensure people at risk have access to nutritious food and stable housing in a safe community, which also creates opportunities for reasonably priced and timely transportation to employment and services and advances a community of self-sufficient citizens.  United Way is always working to build people up from safety net services to programs that allow them to build towards their futures.

The Work We're Doing

Local volunteers on Community Councils use their knowledge of community problems to distribute funds through multi-year, competitive grants where the needs are greatest. To make the best use of contributor dollars, United Way holds agencies accountable for the programs they run, only funding programs with good results. Grants are typically awarded for a period of three years, with continued funding dependent on satisfactory outcome reports. Click on one of the following links to view United Way of the Midlands' Community Investments in Basic Needs:

Why Focus on Basic Needs?

More than 15% of the residents in Richland, Newberry and Fairfield counties live in poverty and pockets persist in rural areas of Lexington County. Individuals and families with very low incomes often forgo basic needs when compelled to choose among housing, food, childcare, health care or transportation expenses. Data underscore the need:
  • Nearly 15% of South Carolinians struggle daily with food insecurity—making our state first in the nation for hunger.
  • On a single night in January, volunteers across the four counties identified more than 1,100 homeless men, women and children.
  • Both metro and rural communities in the four counties struggle to find solutions for public transportation.
While some people in our communities are vulnerable from poverty, many others are unsafe. South Carolina ranks 6th in the nation in the number of homicides of women as a result of domestic violence. There were 35,894 victims of domestic violence in South Carolina in 2005. The consequences often extend beyond the victim of violence because more than half of the female victims of domestic violence live in households with children under the age of 12.