#rhfunded

For the past year, Raysa Reyes has been helping homeless LGBT teens rebuild their lives.

“They’re young. Sometimes it’s challenge to convince them to see past this moment in their lives,” said Raysa, an outreach specialist with the Robin Hood-funded Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest service provider dedicated to LGBT homeless youth. “You have to meet them where they are and I feel AFC does a good job of that.”

Prior to joining the outreach team, she was a youth counselor at one of AFC’s emergency housing sites. Now her days are spent travelling across New York City, delivering food, water, safe sex kits, and information to homeless LGBT teens.

“We don’t profile because it’s hard to say who is homeless and who isn’t. Instead, we just go out to where homeless teens and LGBT teens tend to gather,” she explained. “We talk to everyone. I’ve talked to teachers or professors, who take our kits or flyers because they have students who are homeless.”

For Susana Chamorro, helping homeless teens is personal.

“I know what it’s like. I was homeless as a youth. By the age of 5, I was on my own. I basically couch surfed, but when I was 11, the couches ran out. From 11 to 16, I was on the street. I did sex work to survive until I went to Job Corps and I’ve been working ever since.”

Susana is an outreach specialist with the Robin Hood-funded Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest service provider dedicated to LGBT homeless youth. She roams the five boroughs delivering food, clothes, safe sex kits, and information to keep LGBT youth on the streets safe.

Coalition for Queens Access Code Demo Day

Just last week the Coalition for Queens Access Code program held its Android demo day at the Museum of the Moving Image. 

Yesterday evening some of our P.Y.T. members spent time at the Robin Hood offices working with veterans from Services for the Underserved (SUS) on mock interviews. 

In 2014 we invested $133 million in ‪#‎RHFunded‬ organizations to fight poverty in New York City. Thanks to the generosity and support from many, the programs we fund were able to have a positive impact on a great amount of low-income New Yorkers.