ASOH is the success that it is, thanks to those we serve and who pay it forward to actively seek to support their peers and help the collective community grow and evolve ASOH.
One of the earliest former foster youth recipients of ASOH is Yolanda. After we created Yolanda’s home she joined us as a volunteer at the very next home that we created. She took the day off work and gave up her crucial wages to volunteer. We saw how this opportunity organically connected her to a community of people volunteering that she would otherwise have never met. She immediately made friends and mentors who opened-up doors for her just as a family would. In these very early days we observed that these young people needed not only a sense of home but a sense of community.
By inviting each recipient to pay it forward, we have witnessed a groundswell of recipients becoming a part of, and building community. Each year over 120 recipients pay it forward and in the process they educate the broader community who become inspired to lend their support, expertise and resources to former foster youth, in new and different ways. It is the true definition of growing community. If not for our former foster youth showing up we would not be able to achieve the impact and the success.
Combining access to affordable housing and critical resources, creating homes, and providing an ongoing community of care, ASOH’s Three Step Pathway to Stability has demonstrated community collaboration in creating lasting outcomes, transforming the lives of 3,100+ foster youth and their families in Los Angeles to date while also scaling the grassroots organization to an $10 million operation. Many of our key staff, integral to this process, were once recipients. They paid it forward and we learnt from them and they collectively grew ASOH.
Fatima who had her home created in 2019 and is on staff and recently joined us to create the first home in NYC. You can see many of our recipients thriving on this webpage. We love looking at these stories with profound hope. There are so many stories that we seek to document to amplify their inspiring voices who teach us to do and be better.
Over the past eleven years, ASOH has refined its unique approach into a comprehensive model that utilizes innovation, technology and community-driven programs to prevent homelessness for youth aging out of foster care and provide a new frontier of possibilities. All of this has been layered with the insights, expertise and wisdom generously shared by the foster youth we serve.
This Foster Care Awareness Month we honor those we have served and continue to serve. If not for them, we would not be the organization that we are and that which we are growing into.
