Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
APPEARED IN


View All Articles

Download PDF

DIRECTORIES:

Job Opportunities

Tutors

Workshops

Events

Sections:

Books

Camps & Sports

Careers

Children’s Corner

Collected Features

Colleges

Cover Stories

Distance Learning

Editorials

Medical Update

Metro Beat

Movies & Theater

Museums

Music, Art & Dance

Special Education

Spotlight On Schools

Teachers of the Month

Technology

Archives:

1995-2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

NOVEMBER 2004

An Investment in Family
and Education for Homeless Children

by Matilda Raffa Cuomo

HELP USA is the nation’s largest builder, developer and manager of supportive housing with comprehensive, on-site human services for homeless and low-income families, serving more than 2,500 families each year at fifteen facilities throughout the New York metropolitan area.  HELP USA is sharing its model of operation and serves close to 11,000 homeless and low-income individuals nationwide with facilities in Philadelphia, Houston, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Little Rock and Memphis.

Founded in 1986 by Andrew Cuomo, who later served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the mission of HELP USA is to help children and families who are homeless and others in need become and remain self-reliant. HELP USA’s services and programs primarily address the following social issues: housing, job training, domestic violence, substance abuse services, youth development, mentoring and day care.

Children need family stability and positive role models. HELP USA recognizes that domestic violence is the primary cause of homelessness and unemployment for a significant portion of this population.  In fact, at least 50 percent of homeless women and children are escaping homes of violence, while nearly 100 percent of women receiving domestic violence services identify the violence as a significant impediment to their obtaining and maintaining employment. Since 1994, HELP Works, the agency’s welfare-to-work initiative, has placed more than 4,500 homeless family members in employment, helping them to achieve economic self-sufficiency.

HELP USA provides the families with initial health assessments at most of its sites, ensures pregnant women receive prenatal attention, and checks to be certain children receive inoculations for school while monitoring for speech and physical development.

As an experienced provider of day care services to homeless families in New York State, HELP’s facilities serve over 300 children daily in New York City alone.

HELP USA offers a range of services to address the after school and recreational needs of resident children and realize their full potential to become responsible, productive adults. Besides offering early childhood education to all children between the ages of 0-6 at its family-based facilities, HELP USA also offers after-school programs for their youth between the ages of 6-18 in New York City. These after-school programs are extremely important for those children in over-crowded classrooms with a lack of counselors, nurses and special attention.

The teachers designate these children at risk to Mentoring USA (MUSA), which is the city’s largest school and site-based, one-to-one mentoring program for children in New York City.  The program trains caring volunteers as mentors to spend one hour a week with a disadvantaged child.

Besides providing mentoring for our general at-risk population including foster care children, as an affiliate of HELP USA, MUSA serves the youth at Genesis Homes in Brooklyn and Genesis RFK apartments in Manhattan. MUSA expects to serve at least 1,000 children this year.

At Genesis Homes in Brooklyn, HELP USA operates the WAY Program (Work Appreciation for Youth), which targets young adolescents and provides a long-term, individualized training and development regimen that instills values, and teaches job skills.

HELP USA subcontracts Boys and Girls Clubs of America Incorporated, to operate after-school programs with recreation programs at HELP I, Genesis Homes in East New York Brooklyn, at HELP Morris and HELP Crotona North in the Bronx, and Genesis RFK Apartments in Manhattan.  MUSA supplements the Boys and Girls Clubs with mentor relationships for the youth, one-to-one for a one-year commitment. MUSA offers a great deal of enrichment that is especially vital to at-risk children. All these programs have the more immediate impact of keeping at-risk children off the streets in a safe environment.

Matilda Raffa Cuomo is Founder and Chairperson, Mentoring  USA.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Name:

Email:
Show email
City:
State:

 


 

 

Education Update, Inc.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2005.