Written by Genevieve Bowen on October 22, 2025
Advertisement
A $1 million gift from Miami’s mayor could help bring the Lotus House’s Children’s Village to life, funding a transformative shelter project serving hundreds of homeless children and families.
At today’s (10/23) meeting, city commissioners are expected to authorize $1 million from Mayor Francis Suarez’s discretionary account to support the Children’s Village at Lotus Village, part of a $25 million fundraising effort to build and expand the facility and its programs for homeless children and youth. The funding would advance construction of the state-of-the-art, five-story, 71,000-square-foot shelter in Overtown.
The project would build on Lotus House’s decades-long work providing sanctuary, education and therapeutic support for women, children and families. The Children’s Village is to serve as “home” to 13 other long-standing nonprofits, utilizing a collective impact model in which Lotus House and the other organizations together provide programming and supportive services to upwards of 500 children at a time, reaching more than 2,500 children, youth, families and community members yearly.
The first of its kind, the Children’s Village offers a comprehensive child- and youth-centered neighborhood education and resource center, providing educational, therapeutic and community services designed to give children and families pathways to stability and opportunity while helping to end and prevent homelessness.
The Lotus Endowment Fund borrowed $18 million from the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation to finance construction. In a Sept. 29 email to Mayor Suarez, Lotus Endowment President Constance Collins wrote, “The DeLuca Foundation has recently generously agreed to provide a 2-to-1 debt forgiveness (up to $6 million total) for new donations made and collected. A grant from the City of Miami of $1 million donated towards the Children’s Village Capital Campaign will help us achieve a $3 million debt reduction.”
The commission is expected to grant the city manager authority to negotiate agreements and allocate the funds from the mayor’s discretionary account to the Lotus Endowment Fund.
Programs and services are to include evidence-based trauma-informed therapy, legal support, healthcare access, academic assistance, summer enrichment and preschool programs, arts and digital media education, LGBTQ support, mindfulness training for caregivers, a playground for children and community events such as back-to-school drives and holiday giveaways.
More than a dozen nonprofit partners including Arts for Learning, Alliance for LGBTQ Youth, Barry University, Children’s Bereavement Center, Easterseals South Florida, Girl Power Rocks, Mindful Kids Miami, Nana’s Restart and the Overtown Children & Youth Coalition will share the facility, working together to provide coordinated programming and support.
By co-locating multiple organizations under one roof, the Children’s Village aims to maximize collaboration and resource sharing, creating a central hub that helps vulnerable children and families access services while modeling a new approach to ending and preventing homelessness.