“We depend on the United Way for pretty much all of our funding,” McKinney says. “The state keeps cutting the budget for our services, so what we get from them is all we can really depend on.”

McKinney says the center gets $25,000 a year. Once, it received $35,000 a year, but if the United Way cannot meet its annual goal, institutions such as King-Kennedy suffer. Because the center runs on program-based funding, less money means fewer programs. She says a panel visits each year when the center reapplies for funding.

“They look at us in amazement that we can keep our doors open,” says McKinney, who earns $460 every two weeks for her “Sunday-to-Sunday” job. “I just think it is by the grace of God we are maintaining.”

Among the programs King-Kennedy provides is a food giveaway the last two Fridays of each month. A week’s worth of food is passed out during the evening after people get off work.

“We’re the only agency in Portage and Summit County open in the evening for food distribution,” McKinney says. “Why hasn’t anyone else seen this need?”

While much has improved in the community over the past 30 years, more than 300 people use services such as the food distribution every month, McKinney says. The 2000 census data says that 5.9 percent of families in Portage County were below the poverty line, but that percentage may be rising because of the recent economic downturn.

“We are seeing people come to us for help that we have never seen before,” says Laurene Miller, director of Catholic Charities of Portage County. “A lot more people are losing their jobs and not being able to find work in the county.”

Miller says her group has seen a surge in the amount of people who come to them for help on paying bills and getting jobs. The groups in the area can only do so much to help them.

“For some people it’s a choice between paying the gas bill or buying groceries,” Miller says. “We try our best to give them enough so that they can get by, but we’re limited to what we can give them.”

A white porcelain kitchen sink stands out among the fall colors invading the inside of what was once a house — now only a pile of wood giving way to a cross section of rooms no longer inhabited. The roof has collapsed. Few walls are intact, but the structure remains. Of the surrounding houses left standing, most look as though they could topple any minute. Stripped cars litter yards. Speed limit signs are twisted and spray-painted with the word Crip. Windows are sealed with cardboard instead of glass.

And all 15 minutes from Kent State.

“This area used to be the third worst rural ghetto in the United States,” says Sandra McKinney, director of the King-Kennedy Center in the McElrath community. “It’s gotten better since then, but we can still use all the help we can get.”

The King-Kennedy Center came to Ravenna Township’s McElrath neighborhood, where there was no sewer system available until 1974, when a local church provided a building and financial help. The center was started by Kent State and the McElrath Improvement Corp. and has since been funded mostly by the United Way of Portage County. It is six miles from campus and works today to keep the area in a stable, livable condition.

McKinney says King-Kennedy began as a multi-faceted project, the first part being the center and the second a gym, which was never built. However, it currently has the only basketball court in the area. McKinney says it is the only center of its kind in the United States that students have built.

“You may not have been there for the first part,” she says, “but you can be there for the second part.”

McKinney says the area used to have no streetlights, no paved streets and no running water. Houses were pieced together. People would dump their trash here.

“It’s a lot better than what it was, but there’s a great deal of improvement that can be done,” McKinney says. “We’re finally moving up to the 1960s — and it’s 2003.”

The bright personality of McKinney and the center mirror each other. The walls are lined with bright reds and yellows and pictures done by children who come every day after school. McKinney has been there 11 years and is proud of the center and what it has done for the community, but the center itself is always in need.