Stacy Morales

City Life KIX shares the love of Christ with young people and their families, and gives them a safe place to learn and grow in the gospel. “Doing life” with kids is at the heart of it: the goal is a critical mass of indigenous leaders who stay in, give back to, and transform their own neighborhoods.

KIX began in West Homestead in 1993 and now serves more than 300 children and youth at three Miami-Dade sites: West Homestead/Florida City; Goulds in Princeton, the nation's largest Habitat for Humanity community; and North Miami, with Vive City Chapel. The free after-school program offers literacy, homework help, health and nutrition classes, fitness and life skills in high-crime, high-poverty neighborhoods, and since 2019 KIX Clubs led by local high school students have served elementary kids.

Its Indigenous Leadership Development program walks high school and college students from a first mentoring relationship through discipleship to mentoring others themselves, with job training and a leadership coach. Stacy Morales directs City Life KIX for Youth for Christ Miami & Broward, which has served young people across both counties for more than 75 years.

City Life KIX is funded in part by The Children's Trust, Miami-Dade's voter-approved source of support for children and families, and by grants from the Ocean Reef Community Foundation. Those grants are expanding its Teen Indigenous Leaders development and employment mentoring program to both the West Homestead and Goulds sites, adding a leadership coach for each indigenous leader and a new middle school leadership program.