Adult Friends for Youth

Area of Focus: Youth
Website:  www.afyhawaii.com

Adult Friends for Youth (AFY) works to enhance the potential for all youth to achieve a rewarding life and become productive members of society.  AFY reaches out to youth afflicted by poverty, violent family situations, drugs and language barriers.  Every kid matters and AFY works with at-risk youth so that the youth come to believe that they matter.  Once youth believe in themselves, the youth change their destructive behaviors into constructive and socially desirable ones

AFY is best-known for its work with gang members.  Currently, the agency works with more than 460 youth in 25 therapy groups, primarily through the Outreach to High Risk Youth Program.  These youth are significantly alienated from the mainstream and usually do not participate in organized programs.  They tend to be disruptive to conventional programs and are likely to be kicked out.  AFY has the knowledge and skill to engage and help them, which enables youth to resolve problems that include alcohol and drug abuse, violent and aggressive behaviors, family conflicts, and criminal activities.

AFY’s Outreach to High Risk Youth Program encompasses work with youth gangs as whole entities to disband groups; mediation between gangs; and work with gang members and former gang members in groups, as individuals, in the judicial system, and in jail.  AFY provides group therapy in schools, a therapeutic Competency-Based education program leading to a high school diploma for high risk youth, and parenting support for at-risk teen parents.  AFY also runs a statewide prevention program called the Student Transition Convention annually on O‘ahu, Maui, Kaua‘i and the Big Island for 10,000 5th and 6th graders who are transitioning to middle/intermediate school.

AFY began in 1985 as a two-year federal demonstration grant project that established a volunteer mentoring program for at-risk children at the University of Hawai‘i’s School of Social Work.  It evolved into a professionally staffed agency to help high-risk and troubled youth.  One of the counselors went to jail at the age of 18 for his part in a drive-by shooting. With the help of AFY, he went on to earn a master’s degree in social work and now counsels youth in danger of repeating his mistakes. Another former gang member now conducts the student transition program.