Youth Development Program

Horn of Africa Services has been implementing the youth development program to build generational gap among the communities of color, black, immigrant, low-income those resides in King County. This program is designed in such a way it can close disparities in youth support program facing the above stated communities.

The program is designed by taking consideration all aspects of the youth and families’ values, such as language, culture, and religion identities. By doing so HOAS is intended to bring sustainable youth development. This program targeted on two main focuses.

Helping youth make effective transition to adulthood.

Supporting school age youth and children to succeed in their school.

Helping youth make effective transition to adulthood Under this program HOAS make all efforts so that youth make effective transition from youth to adulthood becoming responsible adulthood. To bring this vision HOAS further divided its program to the following categories.

Sub Programs

After School Tutoring Program

Leadership and Civic engagement

About After School Program:

Tutoring and Homework Assitance
Inspiring STEM Exploration
Fostering Artistic Creativity
Engaing Summer Programs
Empowering Parent Advocacy
School Outreach for Collaboration
Summer program to keep students engaged in learning by having fun activities

After School Tutoring Program

This enables HOAS to fulfill the literacy gaps that is impacting the targeted community for centuries. Many of those parents HOAS targeted have none to low level education, which largely impacted their children forcing them to miss support of their parents on their education due to the family’ low education background. An educated families cannot be able to support their kids with their school needs.

Therefore, HOAS train families on how to be supportive to their children in school with the little potential they possess. Additionally, the communities targeted by HOAS are made of many families with single parent, in which case the parents unable to fulfill their duties to their children as parents.

Therefore, HOAS arranged after-school program around the schools so that the children drop off after school. HOAS also evaluate the student progress by going through the student’s education background, discussion with their professors, family, and stakeholders.

Leadership and Civic engagement

Under this program HOAS engage youth to actively participate in their community, discussing on effective conflict resolution methods, benefit of actively participating in voting, rightfully demanding to change or modification of laws and regulations that didn’t favor the interest of the community, understanding once right and responsibilities in life and specially while interacting with law enforcement bodies and using emergency services. Implementing this enable HOAS to create oriented youth those effectively execute their responsibilities in society as an adult.

Gun Violence and Gang Awareness in the East African Community

Our primary objective in this initiative is to raise awareness surrounding gun violence and gang activities among East African youth in the Seattle and Washington area. The urgency is emphasized by recent incidents in Washington where young East African children, some as young as 12 and 14, have tragically become victims of gun violence. This distressing reality has left families grappling with confusion as to why so many children are losing their lives or getting involved in gang activities. Heartbreakingly, some of our clients have experienced the loss of more than two children due to gang-related incidents.

Through a series of in-person and virtual workshops, each 2 hours long, we successfully engaged 650 East African youth between the ages of 12 and 20.

These workshops empowered the youth with conflict resolution skills, fostered positive relationships with law enforcement, and deepened their understanding of gun violence.