East Side House, Inc.

East Side House seeks to unleash the economic power of our communities through education and workforce development opportunities. East Side House offers a comprehensive portfolio of programs that provides support at every stage of the lifecycle – from birth through senior years, to create pathways to employment, independence and improved quality of life.

To achieve our goals, East Side House uses a model that is unique in today’s human services world: we provide two layers of intensive support to ensure the academic, professional and personal growth of our participants and their families. This Primary Person Model links every participant in our programming with individualized support through a Primary Person, a caring adult who is responsible for building a relationship with each participant and supporting their progress. This Primary Person remains in contact with the participant throughout their stay in each program, ensuring an individualized experience critical for all our participants and providing a positive role model for success. A significant responsibility of the Primary Person is to refer students to ESH’s Social Services Department when more serious barriers to their progress arise.
Below details the wide range of services offered by East Side House to ensure families had access to supports that lift them out of poverty and into the economic mainstream.
• Head Start/Early Head Start
• Elementary school after school programs
• Middle school after school programs
• High School Equivalency
• Transfer High School and Young Adult Borough Centers (high schools designed for students who are not on track for timely graduation)
• Workforce Development programs for adults
• Senior Centers

East Side House has nearly 130 years of experience operating successful programs in high-needs communities. East Side House is lead by a group of passionate professional with over 80 years of combined experience in non-profit management. This team is lead by Executive Director, Daniel Diaz, who grew up in the Bronx and has overseen and lead the recent growth of East Side House from 18 to 29 sites. Diaz was name one of Crain’s New York Business’ 40 Under 40 in 2019.
Committed to sustainability and growth, the following characteristics define East Side House capacity for achieving its goals:
1. Investment in Talent- ESH facilitates a monthly Leadership Academy, a professional development series for all program management staff, which addresses key issues operating youth programs. Staff receives relevant professional development workshops and training as well as an opportunity to share best practices with colleagues. Active participation in ongoing work-related training is responsible for training current and future leadership of ESH and is a factor in staff promotions. In addition to Leadership Academy, ESH implemented our Emerging Leaders Program, which trains a small group of nominated leaders in the organization to be coached, mentored, and trained for senior leadership at ESH. ESH maintains a culture of supervision with regular monthly supervision with staff around professional development, performance and monitoring. Throughout the year, supervisors are responsible for developing individual professional development plans as well as connecting staff with relevant trainings.
2. Commitment to Data Informed Practices- Across all East Side House programs, the agency leadership team develops annual program-based and agency-wide performance targets (based on prior year baseline data and contractual obligations). We make monthly use of Quality Assurance tools to assess performance against targets. Quality Assurance tools collect both qualitative and quantitative data to provide context and insight to program functioning.
3. Community Partnership- ESH currently maintains a referral network of over 30 resource partners serving the greater Bronx and Northern Manhattan communities. Since 1999, ESH has worked in partnership with the NYC Department of Education and currently hosts programs in 18 DOE schools. ESH has been the anchor agency of the United Way of New York City’s ReadNYC initiative for the past 7 years. ESH was selected based on our reputation in the community ability to act as a community convener.
4. Financial Strength- East Side House has maintained a diverse and strong portfolio of public and private support. For the past 6 years, East Side House has achieved a 4 out of 4 star rating from Charity Navigator, an accomplishment only achieved by 5% of rates charities. East Side House has also maintained clean annual audits or over 7 years.

East Side House is proud of its recent accomplishments:
• In 2017, East Side House launched its innovative Post-Secondary Pathways program. a first-of-its-kind program that combines market research and youth services to connect at-risk young people with careers in two of the fastest growing industries in New York City: healthcare and technology. Students, most of whom came to ESH on the verge of dropping out of high school, have the opportunity to earn certification in health or technology skills as they complete their high school diploma.
• Across East Side House’s high school (and equivalency) programs, which serve over 5000 students a year, had the following results:
o 78% graduation rate.
o 74% of graduates were accepted to college.
o We expect 500 students will enroll in college within one year of graduation.
• East Side House is proud to share that we were selected by the Federal Government’s Office of Health and Human Services as a Head Start/Early Head Start direct grantee. This is East Side House’s first-ever federal direct grant. The $3.5 million annual contract began on 7/1/2019 and will allow us to expand to 1 additional site, and serve a total of 241 students. The program is a Dual-Language certified. 97% of ESH students meet NYS Standards upon program completion.
• In response to the needs of our children and families, and to mitigate the learning gap between our participants and their more affluent counterparts, East Side House launched an extended day learning for our youngest learners. STEAMMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math, Music, and Movement) Academy provides our early childhood participants with additional learning hours, and parents a safe space for their children while they work.
• We have been selected as a national model for best practices in family engagement services by the National Head Start Association
• In lockstep with East Side House’s 5 Year Strategic Plan, STEM services have been embedded in all elementary and middle school programs. This includes East Side House’s inaugural Robotics Team.
ESH is currently (March 2020) undergoing planning for our next 5 Year Strategic Plan.
We are also excited to share that East Side House has been approved to open a charter high school based on our successful PSP model. We are currently awaiting an available charter to be allocated to us to open the school.