Las Vegas Sands on Tuesday announced a contribution of $300,000 to the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.
This brings Las Vegas Sands’ contributions to NPHY’s programs that address the growing population of youth experiencing homelessness in Clark County to $3.2 million since 2014. NPHY also leads the statewide program, Movement to End Youth Homelessness.
“Sands has been a transformational partner for more than 10 years, consistently supporting our vision to be Nevada’s leading advocate and service provider for youth experiencing homelessness,” NPHY CEO Arash Ghafoori said in a statement. “The company has helped us give youth in crisis a pathway to stability while fueling our vision toward lasting solutions that overcome one of the most critical issues in our community and state. Our partnership is again leading us toward another milestone as we kick off development of the state’s first stand-alone plan to end youth homelessness this year and bring statewide stakeholders together to contribute to this work at the 10th annual Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit in November.”
In 2025, Nevada’s first statewide study on youth homelessness found that almost 3,000 unaccompanied youth across Nevada accessed homeless services in one year. The study also examined young people falling through the cracks of systems and determined that the true number of young people experiencing homelessness across the state could be as high as more than 33,000 in a single year. At the same time, NPHY has experienced unprecedented levels of uncertainty regarding government funding at federal and local levels.
Sands’ focus on helping end youth homelessness is one of the company’s top community engagement priorities at corporate headquarters, and the 2026 Sands Cares investment supports three foundational areas: funding programs for youth in crisis; providing capacity-building support to facilitate NPHY’s growth; and continuing to underwrite NPHY’s leadership of Nevada’s Movement to End Youth Homelessness.
“Our commitment to ending youth homelessness remains strong – yet the challenges have only gotten stronger as incidence rates in our state continue to rise,” said Sands Senior Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Affairs Ron Reese. “We cannot rest on what has been done in the past if we are to ensure safety nets are in place for our most vulnerable youth. NPHY continues to evolve solutions to help youth in crisis move beyond their situations and has a sound vision for how our state can mobilize to end youth homelessness. That’s why we continue to invest in their mission.”
With Sands Cares’ support, NPHY served 726 youth in 2025 across its core programs, the most youth the organization has assisted in one year and made more than 17,000 contacts with youth in need via outreach efforts. NPHY’s emergency shelter is one of the only privately funded emergency shelters in Southern Nevada and the only shelter that serves unaccompanied minors experiencing homelessness.
A portion of the Sands Cares funding is underwriting NPHY’s comprehensive care for young people experiencing homelessness, which includes outreach efforts, Safe Place mobile crisis intervention, family reunification, the drop-in center, and housing programs spanning emergency shelter, transitional housing and rapid re-housing. This year’s Sands Cares funding is enabling NPHY to work on increasing emergency shelter beds by 50% without changing or increasing its shelter staffing model.
NPHY also is restructuring functions previously housed under a central development department into three entities: a development department; an impact, systems and policy department; and an advocacy and communications department. Separating these functions will enable the organization to best capitalize on development and communication opportunities while focusing other staff on leading systems-level work. Sands Cares funding is empowering this transition through underwriting of staffing and other infrastructure needs.
The third component of the Sands Cares donation is continued investment in NPHY’s leadership of the statewide Movement to End Youth Homelessness, including Sands’ co-presentation of the 2026 Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit with NPHY. Other NPHY activities supported through this funding include launching the statewide process to create Nevada’s first standalone plan to end youth homelessness; establishing the first statewide Movement Youth Action Board; establishing and supporting regional youth action boards across the state; bringing Movement Institute trainings to northern Nevada for the first time; and continuing advocacy to strengthen higher education access for vulnerable young people.
