The Grooming Project is a tuition-free, six-month training program of Empowering the Parent to Empower the Child (EPEC), a nonprofit dedicated to reducing generational poverty in Kansas City. The Grooming Project’s education-based approach not only financially empowers clients through credentials in pet grooming, but it also improves their family’s future as a whole through parenting and budgeting classes, mental health support, life skills courses, and other needed medical services.

Small groups of students begin the program at various points throughout the year and progress through all the levels of grooming, starting with bathing and ending with hand scissoring. The Grooming Project’s new Lee’s Summit Salon is the next phase of the program, reserved for the school’s highest-performing graduates.

Volunteer opportunities within the grooming salon include receptionist roles. Volunteers are needed for 3-12 hours per week between the hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from Monday through Saturday and this would be a recurring position. Volunteers will be trained on the salon’s pet scheduling software, phone system, and credit card processing machine.