LaunchNW, an initiative of the Innovia Foundation, has raised over $72 million in gifts and commitments to support children in its 20-county service area, says executive director, Ben Small. 

It's currently set to award $1 million in scholarships in the fall to students headed to trade programs, apprenticeships, and two-year and four-year colleges in the Inland Northwest. About 215 students have signed up through the program’s scholarship portal and will be eligible for up to a $5,000 yearly scholarship. LaunchNW also will receive a $500,000 matching state grant, Small says. 

“I think there are multiple levels and multiple motivations why people want to give back,“ Small says. “For some, it’s making sure we have a highly skilled workforce in Spokane County or our 20-county region. For others, they want to invest in the power of education.” 

The $72 million is nearly the halfway point for the initiative’s overall goal of $150 million, Small says.

LaunchNW was founded in the summer of 2022 with a focus on supporting children from birth to career attainment through scholarships and other support services intended to provide greater access to college and career education.

The program eventually will serve 10 counties in Eastern Washington and 10 counties in northern Idaho, reaching 102 school districts with a total of 147,000 K-12 students, Small says. 

Small leads a five-person team that works out of the Innovia Foundation’s offices located on the sixth floor of the Lincoln Plaza building, at 818 W. Riverside, in downtown Spokane. The LaunchNW team and Innovia Foundation work in collaboration with volunteers throughout its service area to fundraise, develop, and implement services.

In Spokane County, a governing committee of about 35 volunteers representing diverse sectors, dubbed the Spokane County Leadership Council, is tasked with rolling out the wraparound services that will support students in the county. 

LaunchNW programs begins with data collection, Small says. In 2022, the Spokane County Leadership Council, of which Small is a part, began examining data and discovered some concerning mental health challenges that youth face on their journey to post-high school and career attainment, he says. 

From 2010 to 2021, there was a precipitous rise in self-harm and suicide attempts in children ages 10 to 17, Small says. According to the county’s annual reporting, there were 550 total suicides and suicide attempts in children 10 to 17 years old in 2021, up from 389 in 2020, 303 in 2019, 264 in 2018, and 317 in 2017. In 2010, there were 54 suicides and suicide attempts in Spokane County. 

“We saw this huge change over 10 years, and you couldn’t always pinpoint it to the pandemic and social isolation,” Small says. 

The group also evaluated factors that impact children such as kindergarten readiness, school attendance, and high school graduation rates, which reflected that only 47.9% of graduates continue to some form of post-high school education. Small says LaunchNW wants to reach the state’s goal which aims to have 70% of its population attain some form of post-high school education. 

“When we look at other data points, disengagement and isolation seem to be this through line across the entire data, across the entire life pathway," Small says. "The surgeon general called it an epidemic of loneliness.” 

Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory calling attention to “the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection” present even before the onset of the pandemic. The "medicine hiding in plain sight" is social connection, Murthy advises. 

LaunchNW created a mentorship program, Mpower Mentoring, that connects junior and senior high school students with a high school peer, college student, adult, or family mentor to offer support in researching careers, applying for higher education, and finding scholarship opportunities. Mpower is built on the power of face-to-face interaction, Small says. 

LaunchNW is expanding on the mentoring by creating Project Engage, a program that will help students put down phones and electronic devices, and engage in real life, Small says.

Small cites social psychologist Jonathan Haidt who tracks the introduction of the smartphone and its correlation with the mental health crisis in youth in his book "Anxious Generation."

“We want them engaged in athletics, we want them engaged in art and band and community events so that they put the phone down and start talking and interacting with one another," Small says. "And that effort is really to get away from that isolation piece that people are feeling.” 

Small says LaunchNW also wants to get to the problem of mental health before students are in high school. When looking at families with young children from birth to 3 years old, Small has found that those families often also feel isolated in the community, further impacting the way they relate with their young children.

"Taking the time to be present for a child ... is so important," Small says. "Social-emotional health, and early relational health, are the building blocks we are focusing on."

To address helping young families, LuanchNW has contracted with community organizations to provide five early childhood engagement specialists to work with young families. 

LaunchNW will kick off Project Engage at the start of the 2024-2025 school year and will have a dedicated website in which parents and youth can search for afterschool activities throughout the county, he says. 

Small says it has rolled out LaunchNW programs in Garfield and Columbia counties and plans to move forward with a plan to roll out in Kootenai County within the next three to five years. 

“We expect to add at least three more communities this year; over the next two years, they will be in the readiness phase that we are in at Spokane County," Small says.