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PHILANTHROPY NEWS DIGEST
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| Name: | Fresh Youth Initiatives |
| Founded: | 1993 |
| Co-Directors: | Rodney Fuller and Andrew Rubinson |
| Address: | 280 Ft. Washington Avenue #5, New York, NY 10032 |
| Phone: | 212.781.1113 |
| Fax: | 212.781.1151 |
| E-mail: | freshyi@att.net |
| URL: | http://www.freshyouth.org/ |
| Mission: | To support young people in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan as they design and carry out community service projects, develop leadership skills, fulfill their potential, and realize their dreams. |
| Background: | Since its founding in 1993, FYI has operated with a firm belief that young people are an underutilized resource in the community and are fully capable — given guidance and support — of playing a vital role in addressing community concerns. FYI's program menu of community service activities is varied and allows for young people with differing levels of skill and motivation to participate. For example, youth carry out projects of their own design in the organization's "Neighborhood Service Leaders" program, and more motivated youth such as those in the "Literacy Brigade" can receive training to deliver specific services to peers and other community members. In FYI's recently completed program year, more than 200 youth participants volunteered 10,328 hours of service to the community. |
| Current Program: | FYI's main program, Community Youth in Action,
supports local youth as they create, develop and implement their own service projects, participate in service retreats, and hold public events to share their work and its results. An important facet of the program is "cascading leadership," in which older youth design their own service project, then recruit and manage a team of newer participants to help carry out their vision.
The menu of service projects carried out by FYI participants continues to be varied and ambitious, and includes gathering and distributing food through the organization's Helping Hands Food Pantry, cleaning parks, painting murals, collecting and distributing clothes to those in need, assisting at local day care centers, and tutoring younger students in reading and math. Other current programs include a one-to-one Mentoring Program (with 14 current matches), a Career Awareness Program, a Summer of Service initiative, and an entrepreneurial program called the Calendar Project. |
| Recent Successes: | In recent months, FYI has:
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| Web Site: | At the Fresh Youth Initiatives Web site (www.freshyouth.org) visitors can glimpse photos of kids in action around the Washington Heights neighborhood as well as other neighborhoods around New York City. The site also features details about the organization's programming and approach to engaging youth in service efforts. |
| Funding Needs: | General support that FYI receives goes primarily toward supplies for various service projects in which it's engaged (paint, brushes, shovels, rakes, materials for sleeping bags). The organization also welcomes donors who wish to "buy a brick" for the building it is renovating. For more information, contact Andrew Rubinson at (212) 781-1113, or via email at freshyi@att.net.
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Last Week Civic Education Project
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Every week, the "Spotlight" highlights the activities of a different U.S. nonprofit organization; periodically, the spotlight shifts to an NGO in a country other than the U.S. The selection of organizations for the "Spotlight" is based on criteria such as programmatic interests, geographic focus, and size to ensure the broadest possible representation of the nonprofit sector, both in the U.S. and abroad.
If you'd like to see your NPO or NGO in the "Spotlight," e-mail a description of your organization, following the above format, to spotlight@fdncenter.org, or send a hard copy via snail mail to: NPO SpotlightThe editors of Philanthropy News Digest reserve the right to edit submissions. |
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