Rhonda's fundraising page for The Link

According to the National Alliance on Homelessness:

"On a single night in 2023:

• 34,703 unaccompanied youth were counted as homeless. Of those, 90.6 percent were between the ages of 18 to 24. The remaining 9.3 percent (or 3,240 unaccompanied children) were under the age of 18.
• 40.8 percent of homeless youth are unsheltered — sleeping outside, in a car, or some place not meant for human habitation.

These numbers are imprecise, and the single night number is likely an undercount."

These are the children in our neighborhoods and schools, and no community is exempt from this statistic. 

Every one of these young people has a heartbreaking story to tell and often many of these youth will be the victims of some kind of violence.  The Link provides programming to help these youth find a safe place and learn independent living skills.  These youth are not healed overnight, their problems don’t end in a shelter bed, independence requires support and education.

Some of these youth will get recruited by sex traffickers.  For these cases, our Passageways program provides a place to heal, with counseling and supportive services that help them transition out of “the life.”

Some of our youth may be involved in the juvenile justice system, or are at risk of, or are, truant.  For these youth, we provide services that require they be involved in their own process to get out of the court system.  Our Youth Connections Center, Marshall Reed Youth Center and POWER (Positive Opportunities for Women of Every Race) programs are being used as a model for other major cities, and have a proven record of lower recidivism rates for the youth who have committed non-violent crimes.

We teach youth how to take care of themselves, by giving them independent living skills, helping them get back into school, finding them safe places to live and a chance to heal.

I am incredibly proud to work for this amazing organization!!

Want some of our Link stats? We do the work!!