Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach, (ACYFO) is an East Harlem based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing supportive services to local youth and families, as well as citizens returning from incarceration. We use evidence-based interventions to engage the community in violence disruption, combating poverty, and promoting public safety.
Our programs use a holistic approach to service delivery, ensuring that participants have access to a diverse catalog of training and educational opportunities. We provide professional development and job training, artistic literacy and expression, and community service learning. We operate a food pantry to address food insecurity in the community.
We execute our mission through three key components:
Research and advocacy
In order to foster informed solutions in East Harlem to offset poverty and incarceration we conduct community- centered research with youth and adult participants. The information gathered is directly useful to impacted individuals, their communities, policy makers, academic institutions, nonprofits and beyond.
Building relationships
We form relationships to build our individual and collective capacity to be change agents.
ACYFO is a safe space for community members to seek direct and referral social-psychological support. We have ordained ministers and licensed social workers with lived-experience on call to support community members with mental wellness coaching, individualized mentorship, and referrals for mental health services.
Galvanizing and mobilizing people
We execute our mission by forming strategic collaborations enabling multi-dimensional advocacy and educational strategies. We believe that there is strength in numbers. In 2022 we brought community stakeholders together for community symposiums and discussions about fostering and implementing community-based solutions to promoting public safety and reducing poverty in our communities.
Through our programs we offer a bio, psycho, social, spiritual (holistic) approach to quality of life enhancement. This includes free professional development workshops, artistic literacy courses, and community service learning initiatives. We strive to offset food insecurity through our food pantry, which operates weekly where community members receive a nutritionally balanced supply of fresh, frozen and shelf stable food items to feed an individual or family, three meals per day for three days.
The severity of the opioid epidemic has e resulted in high numbers of opioid overdoses in East Harlem. As a result, we have partnered with East Harlem Educators from Weill Cornell Medicine Center who provide harm reduction education, training and distributes free Narcan kits during our Food Pantry hours. We also provide monthly non medical birthing support and training to women and young mothers, which includes birthing education, postpartum support, and pregnancy and infant loss counseling.