Neighborhood Nonprofit Spotlight: Friends of the Children

Patch talks to Friends of the Children about their targeted programs designed to assist children who are at a high risk.

Patch: Tell Patch a little about your organization!

Friends of the Children: Friends of the Children helps kids break the cycle of generational poverty. We work with the child welfare and education systems to identify the highest-risk children who have experienced significant trauma early in their lives. We enroll children in kindergarten and provide them with a full-time, professional mentor, called a Friend, through high school graduation.

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Patch: How does your organization help to strengthen the local community?

Friends of the Children: Despite the considerable challenges that they face, participants of the program overwhelmingly succeed in breaking destructive generational cycles as shown by our successful long-term program outcomes: 83% of program youth graduate from high school, though more than 60% have a parent who did not complete high school; 93% avoid the juvenile justice system, though 50% have a parent who has been incarcerated; and 98% avoid early parenting, though 85% were born to a teen parent.

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Patch: What is the biggest struggle your organization faces?

Friends of the Children: New and continuous investors are critical to our efforts to continue to grow our capacity and meet the startling need that exists in our community. When we select our new youth, we enroll those living with the greatest challenges, but there are always youth whom we cannot select who live with challenges that are almost as great. This year, even as we select our largest cohort ever, we observed 80 kindergartners at our 3 selection schools who face multiple risk factors severe enough to qualify for our program. We are confident that we enrolled the 35 who need us the most, but it is still impossible to shake the knowledge that in just 3 schools and 11 kindergarten classrooms, there were 45 youth who still needed us. Without tremendous support from new and continuous investors, this number would be higher.

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Patch: What do you hope for the future of your non profit?

Friends of the Children: To be able to provide a Friend for every youth who needs one.

Image via Justine Reimnitz, Friends of the Children