By Bailey Schulz Las Vegas Review-Journal

Three years after it first launched, the Sands Cares Accelerator celebrated its first graduating nonprofit organization Wednesday.

The Marty Hennessy Inspiring Children Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to help children in underserved communities get off the streets and into college, joined Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s three-year mentorship program in 2017.

Through Sands Cares, our charitable giving and community engagement program, we strive to provide numerous community volunteer opportunities for our Team Members throughout the year. Often, these are singular, one-day events, like planting a community garden or helping to build a home with Habitat for Humanity. We also sponsor events that span days—and sometimes months—filled with multiple, thematically connected opportunities.

Working in unison with our stakeholders, we believe that Las Vegas Sands can make a meaningful difference to the quality of our environment, multiplying our positive impacts both now and into the future. Through Sands ECO360, we are on a sustainability journey, and we want our more than 50,000 Team Members to be a part of it. In pursuit of that journey, we’ve set a goal of performing one million Sands ECO360 actions—positive, measurable environmental improvements—by the end of 2020. With more than 900,000 ECO360 actions taken so far, we’re well on our way to achieving our goal.

The third annual Southern Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit, presented by Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth (NPHY) and Sands Cares, takes place Thursday, November 7 at The Venetian Resort. Ahead of Summit 19, NPHY Executive Director Arash Ghafoori spoke to us about the issue of youth homelessness, how the Summit addresses the issue and about the importance of NPHY’s partnership with Sands and others.

First and foremost: Why is the Youth Homelessness Summit critical for Southern Nevada?