FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN NEW YORK

We change destinies. Friends of the Children NY's mission is to change the destiny of New York City's most vulnerable children… one child at a time. At age five, the children we select to participate in our program already have a multitude of barriers to success including caregivers who have experienced incarceration, domestic violence, drug abuse, teen parenting, or homelessness. We select kindergartners who show the greatest number of risk factors and least amount of resiliency factors in the Central Harlem and South Bronx communities of New York City. For example, of the Achievers we currently serve, 98% are impoverished and qualify for free school lunches; 80% live in a single-parent homes; 58% are a child of a teenparent; and, 45% have an incarcerated parent. Children are identified by our staff through a six-week, highly structured screening process conducted in their schools. Once the caretakers accept the invitation to join our program, we make a 12-year commitment to their child so long as they remain within the five boroughs. We select the most at-risk children in New York City, and embark on a 12-year journey with them that begins by pairing them with a full-time, professional Youth Advocate. This close relationship is defined by guidance, inspiration, and commitment. The Advocates help our Achievers uncover their strengths, initiating a remarkable transformation of character and outlook that impacts not only the Achievers, but future generations. The Friends of the Children program model addresses the three conditions most often associated with poverty: dropping out of school and truancy, juvenile delinquency, and teenage parenthood. Our early intervention programming is a transformative catalyst that helps Achievers take control of their future. We have three main goals to ensure that they will be able to create a productive path in adulthood: to graduate high school with a plan for their future, avoid the juvenile justice system and delay parenting until adulthood. Our focus is to empower each Achiever to confront continued risk factors and become agents of change in their ownlives. We are changing the landscape of poverty tomorrow through our actions today. Our evidence-based intervention programming redefines the landscape of ""mentoring"" and what success means for children who are most susceptible to experiencing juvenile delinquency, teenage parenthood, and repeating the cycle of generational poverty. Our goal is that all Achievers in our program graduate from high school with a plan for their future having avoided these barriers to productivity which are all too common in their families and communities. Our vision is to dramatically change the face of generational poverty in New York City. To do this, we aim to have a Friends Place in each of the five boroughs. Our program would then actualize a fundamental shift towards productivity in the lives of almost 1,000 children city-wide.

Our goal is for the Achievers to graduate from high school with a plan for their future having avoided the juvenile justice system and early parenting. To accomplish this, the full-time Youth Advocates, ""the Friends,"" become stable and committed role models who help the Achievers develop personalized paths to success. They leverage the powerful resources of other community-based organizations, creating an accessible and supportive network for our Achievers and their families. Together, with our surrounding community, the Friends help the Achievers define and realize their goals. The Child Program is the first step in our transformative journey, building a strong foundation on which our Achievers can grow and thrive. We begin our process by identifying the most at-risk children in partnering schools through a six-week, highly structured screening process in kindergarten classrooms. Once the caretakers accept the invitation, we pair the Friends with eight kindergarten Achievers. This marks the beginning of the committed 12-year relationship. Our Friends spend at least four hours a week one-on-one with each of the eight Achievers on their roster, interacting with them individually both outside of school and in the classroom. This direct access to the Achievers' school provides our staff with a comprehensive understanding of the child's academic strengths and challenges. The Friend and Achievers embark on personalized social outings, utilizing our community partnerships to provide the Achiever with opportunities to experience New York City in new ways. And because the outings are individually planned around the Achievers, interests evolve into passions and unlock potential. This facilitates incredible transformations of character. Our Adolescent Program leverages the strong seven-year foundation established in our Child Program, but is specifically designed to meet teen Achievers' developmental needs. We provide them with more peer-to-peer support through increased peer group involvement and experiential activities. As in our Child Program, the Friends are there every step of the way. The goal of this program is for the Adolescent Achievers to define their ambitions and be on track to attain them. In doing so, they'll be ready to contribute positively to their communities and families, igniting a change that will impact their lives for years to come. The Afterschool Enrichment and Social Service Programs thoughtfully collaborate with other people who share our values. This team reaches out to schools, camps, afterschool programs, internship programs, and wellness organizations to get as many resources around our Achievers as possible. Our social work team guides caregivers through applications and accompanies them to meetings to ensure the Achievers can thrive. By partnering closely with other organizations, we are able to help the Achievers actualize their goals and anticipate challenges.

We are invested, resourceful, visionary, and fearless. Invested - We unconditionally support our Achievers' progress and accomplishments. Achievers cannot be kicked out of our program and we help them to work through their mistakes. A Friend will be paired with an Achiever for 12 years, no matter what, so long as they remain in the five boroughs of New York City. We take the time to give Achievers the creditthey deserve. Resourceful - We capitalize on our community networks. Our Academic Enrichment and Social Service Programs look beyond the scope of Friends NY to provide valuable family, financial, and wellness services. Our Achievers and their caregivers are connected to over 100 other community based organizations each year. We leverage the expertise of our staff to arrive at success: This might mean liaising with school teachers and caregivers when addressing areas of need. Teachers and caregivers become more informed as a result of our action. Visionary - We break the mold of youth intervention though our ""early, always, and often"" approach: We start children at five years of age, we stay with them for 12 years, and we see Achievers inside and outside of school. We self-assess to actualize change and we create an individualized growth plan unique as each Achiever. As a metrics-driven organization, our database means a lot to us: we have shifted programmatic inputs when evaluations show us what works and what doesn't work. Fearless - We seek the biggest challenges and tackle them head-on: We screen the highest-needs schools in Central Harlem and South Bronx to find the most vulnerable and at-risk children whose environmental factors make them predisposed to fail. We refuse to abandon a child enrolled in our program. Further, we teach the Achievers to be bold in their everyday lives.

After graduating from the program, the Achievers become agents of change and ignite a chain reaction for future generations to follow. For example, this year we reached an important milestone: the first cohort of Achievers graduated from high school having avoided juvenile delinquency and early parenting. All seven will be attending college with generous scholarship packages. Over our twelve-year history, all Achievers enrolled in our program have made steady progress toward the accomplishment of our three primary goals as evidenced by better school attendance, higher promotion rates, higher standardized test performance, and lower delinquency and teen pregnancy rates. Our next step is to continue enrolling 16 Achievers in kindergarten and graduating 16 Achievers from high school each year until the Friends Place in Harlem reaches a capacity of 192. As an organization that is defined by ourcommitment to long-term social change, our vision is to open a Friends Place in every New York City borough with each site serving at capacity; Friends of the Children NY would serve almost 1,000 of the most at-risk children city-wide. With our eye on future growth and affecting more at-risk children, Friends of the Children NY is undertaking the first replication of our successful Harlem model in the South Bronx in the fall of 2013. We are planning to make a 12 year investment in 20 kindergartners from two high-needs schools in the Hunts Point neighborhood. We believe that our early intervention model can actualize a fundamental shift from poverty to productivity for the lives of the most vulnerable youth in the South Bronx just as it has for the past twelve years in Central Harlem. On a national scale, the Friends of the Children model was identified as a "promising best practice"" by the scientific community. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided a grant in 2007 to the Oregon Social Learning Center to conduct a randomized longitudinal study on children enrolled in the program across four states. The goals of the study are to understand the long-term effects of our intervention model on the outcomes of high-risk youth. We are in the fifth year of the NIH study.