Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS) empowers individuals and families to achieve stability and self-sufficiency through housing, workforce development, and essential support services. With support from Lowe’s Hometowns, NVFS will renovate two community bathrooms at the SERVE Family Shelter, enhancing safety, accessibility, and hygiene for families experiencing homelessness. These improvements will create a dignified, trauma-informed environment that fosters stability and wellbeing for hundreds of individuals each year as they work toward permanent housing.

With a mission of breaking the cycle of homelessness and poverty for families and children, ForKids has been empowering families to overcome the complex challenges of homelessness since 1988 and each year impacts hundreds of families and children through crisis response, housing solutions, and academic and social-emotional enrichment for school-age children and youth. Lowe’s Hometowns funding will allow ForKids to renovate an existing space into a dedicated and vibrant Teen Zone to house our after-school Teen Program in a place of their own.

Patriot’s Pantry at the Armed Services YMCA of Hampton Roads has been serving the largest concentration of military-connected individuals in the nation for the past 5 years out of a converted storage closet. With the Lowe’s Hometowns grant, the organization will install new cabinetry, shelving, countertops, flooring, fresh paint and a handicap-accessible pantry door. These renovations will allow much greater storage space, alleviate the need to rent storage units, create a more welcoming atmosphere for patrons, and allow expansion of capacity to serve these brave families.

Special Love partners with the Northern Virginia 4-H Center to provide camping programs for children with cancer and their families. Through Lowe's Hometowns the camp facility will be updated to offer more accessible bathrooms and amenities.  Work will include new bathroom partitions, campfire circle, basketball court, infirmary bathrooms. The renovations will help young patients and their families create lasting memories together.

For 83 years, the USO Center at the Norfolk Naval Station AMC Terminal has served those who serve; providing programs and services to support our nation's military and their families. The center will be renovated with new furniture, flooring, paint, water filtration and plumbing to create a refreshed and more enjoyable space.

In addition to caring for thousands of animals, the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria (AWLA) welcomes more than 150,000 people through their doors each year. The AWLA provides food and supplies for more than 3,000 animals to help keep them in their loving homes. The Lowe's Hometowns project will update the community room, pet pantry, courtyard and adoption area, as well as a mural to make this space even more purposeful.

The YMCA at Virginia Tech is creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Community Resource Center to expand support programs. With plans underway, adding new doors, windows, flooring, paint, lighting, bathrooms, storage space, HVAC, office and meeting space and a kitchenette would prepare this center for the real work to begin.

THRIVE served 18,000 people last year with emergency financial assistance, financial coaching, and food pantry services out of a 2,500 square foot office building. To increase capacity, THRIVE will renovate a new headquarters with a new roof, siding, paint and signage to be a central hub of aid, serving approximately 30,000 residents per year.

The Enchanting Bookmobile will address the lack of access to children's books by delivering free books to lower socioeconomic neighborhoods in the Greater Richmond area. This project will transform a mini bus into a mobile library whose mission is to spread literature to children in need.

Maybeury Elementary Learning Garden wants to improve children's diets through exposure to fresh produce and nutrition education. In partnership with Fit4Kids, this outdoor learning space would be a place where students can blossom. Raised garden beds, a new fence, shade structures and a pavilion for lessons will be added. Irrigation, fruit trees, trash receptacles and native plants all play a role in the learning that will take place in this beautiful backdrop.