Gravitate

OneHeart opened in 2021 with the mission of creating pathways out of poverty for those desiring to thrive. In 2024, we changed our mission statement to empowering people to overcome crisis and achieve self-sustainability. But no matter the verbiage of our mission statement, we believe every person deserves a chance to thrive regardless of their history, heritage, or circumstances. We help vulnerable individuals and families from marginalized populations in South Dakota overcome the challenges of poverty, abuse, addiction, and trauma by providing secure transitional housing and programming that empowers them to transform their lives and break negative cycles for future generations.

Our model was established on the notion that for people to be successfully employable, they first must be stable. We succeeded in mitigating barriers for the most common issues keeping people stuck in the crisis of poverty including transitional living, childcare, transportation, food, Wi-Fi, and more, all at no cost to the client, within a safe and secure environment. We also provided wrap-around intensive case management, space for partner providers to co-locate, and 24-hour life safety and residential support (preventing negative spheres of influence from compromising our guest's progress).

The result? The OneHeart model and design of our campus frees up mental bandwidth which can then be applied toward upward mobility (job/skill/education), and we guide our guests through our unique Options-Based Planning™ intervention predicated on Voice, Choice, and Empowerment, that advances their decision making and coping skills so people can stay employed and housed upon transitioning to the community from our campus. (See below for stories of what people have accomplished at OneHeart!)

Our results were so exciting that, of course, we wanted to do more. OneHeart has only 90 units available to support our target demographic and we recognized that we would never be able to serve and support everyone who needs or wants it. This, combined with significant and severe workforce deficiencies, made us realize we needed to devise a way to reach and develop more people within our target demographic to fill workforce needs. We identified a definite need within this population to have better access to the workforce in a more transformative way, and a definite need within the business world to hire in a more empowered way.

These factors, coupled with significant changes in the nonprofit funding landscape since opening in 2021 and struggling to find sustainable sources of funding despite our phenomenal results, led to the creation of Gravitate™.