Providing opportunities and connecting community


Swerve Outreach is a non-profit 501(c)3 that provides human service outreach and support to At-Risk and underserved youth in Eastern Polk County. Swerve is essentially the strongest and most public facing human service option for the area providing basic needs assistance, health, educational and youth sports opportunities.

The mission of Swerve Outreach is to disrupt the effects of cyclical poverty on the youth in Eastern Polk County. Our mission is to inspire and guide young people to reach their full potential and to help them SWERVE around the obstacles of life by providing them with healthy opportunities. We are empowering children, youth, and their families to work around the barriers of poverty so that they can be healthy, successful members of our community. 

For the past 11 years Swerve Outreach has been committed to providing basic needs assistance and opportunities to At-Risk and underserved youth in Eastern Polk County. We are grateful to have collaborated with hundreds of community volunteers, local business and organizations to work side by side in service to our community and its citizens. We are always looking for areas in which we can improve, become more resourceful and efficient, sustainably grow, and responsibly expand our reach to provide our services to an even greater number of youth who needs us. Community is at our core. SWERVE OUTREACH operates year round. In collaboration with our community, we are helping to provide children with their basic needs so that they might have a brighter future. 

Altoona Kids Cafe


Altoona Kids Cafe is a summer lunch and learn program that provides healthy meals and learning opportunities to At-Risk and underserved youth. Altoona Kids Cafe is more than just a meal. Each day we offer a variety of fun learning opportunities, enrichment, and a healthy lunch. Our goal is to feed the mind, body, and spirit of those who need us the most. We understand the importance of relationships and the power of personal connections.

Kids Cafe is a program run by SWERVE OUTREACH. With a focus on healthy living, academic achievement, and life skills, we are feeding the future. We know that by teaching important values such as respect, integrity, compassion and grace, that we are impacting young lives and strengthening our community.

The Kids Cafe program offers a solution to food insecure students by providing free healthy summer meals Monday through Friday for five weeks in June and July. As of 2023, Kids Cafe now partners with Southeast Polk Community Schools, Southeast Polk Food and Nutrition and Southeast Polk Willowbrook Elementary to expand the reach of our program to even more food insecure students in our community. This summer, Kids Cafe will be held at Willowbrook Elementary and all meals will be provided by Southeast Polk Food and Nutrition as a USDA Open Summer Meal Site. Any young person, age 18 and under will be able to go to Willowbrook Elementary and get a FREE, nutritious meal. Kids Cafe will provide daily programming to registered students. Our daily programming provides students with a wide variety of learning, cultural and growth opportunities. Our curriculum focuses on: Literacy, STEAM-Based Learning, Health and Wellness, and Life Skills. We understand that lack of transportation and low household incomes keep the majority of our students from having access the same cultural and learning experiences that many of their peers do over the summer—so at Altoona Kids Cafe, we bring these experiences to them!

In the summer of 2023 we provided educational enrichment based programming at Altoona Kids Café to 144 enrolled students age 2-18 each day; with 88.1% of our students qualifying and participating in the Free or Reduced school meal program. We served over 3,400 healthy, well balanced meals to students and teen volunteers, and 193 to adult program volunteers through Willowbrook Elementary’s USDA Summer Food Service Program. The daily programs offered by local business people, community members and other professionals helped us to keep our students learning and growing throughout the summer.

Our Kids Cafe volunteers also represent a very important part of the people impacted by our program. In 2023 we had 87 registered program teen and adult volunteers, and 56 school, business and community volunteers donate more than 3,938 hours of their time to provide supervision, serve meals, and teach classes to our students. These volunteers come to us from all over our community, from all walks of life and represent a wide age range. It is a beautiful thing to watch a teen volunteer work alongside their former elementary teacher, a grandparent working with a school administrators or counselor, or a college student working next to a single mother. Each day our program is in operation, more than 50 volunteers are required for everything to run smoothly. We are now a well-known, local non-profit offering engaging volunteer opportunities to high-school students and adults. As our program grows, so does our volunteer base. We are thankful for the breadth of volunteers who value helping others each and every day to ensure positive relationships are developed.

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