By Dr. Lois Lee | Founder & President
In 2011, Dr. Lois Lee created “Children of the Night With Out Walls” (WOW) and partnered with the National Runaway Switchboard who fields over 100,000 calls from youth and their families each year.
Children of the Night WOW offers young people in shelters, drop in centers and outreach programs throughout America on-line GED assessments and GED tutoring, funding for GED testing, sophisticated mental health services including application for financial assistance from the Social Security Administration, and professional volunteers such as lawyers, psychiatrists, physicians and dentists.
From January 1, 2012 to April 30, 2012, we helped 86 young people in 15 different states. We provided 6 youth with GED assessment and 136 ½ hours of online tutoring for the GED. We provided 127 case management services and 11 youth with legal services.
During that same time period, we helped 41 programs in 14 different states and 2 countries outside of the United States. We visited 40 programs throughout the United States to offer our educational, mental health and professional volunteer programs. We provided 5 agencies with fundraising including foundation research, grant writing and other fundraising efforts, 4 existing agencies with program development and 3 agencies visited our shelter home for program development.
Youth living in shelters across America are not receiving the educational services or mental health services required to permanently remove them from life on the streets. Most youth shelters are funded by the federal government and limit a young person’s shelter stay to 21 days.
Our shelter partners and detention centers report that no one is providing a continuum of care for youth when they leave detention centers and foster homes. The countless children living in shelters, motels or on the streets are without services or opportunities to escape the streets. WOW is the first program taking comprehensive educational and mental health services to the streets of our cities.
WOW is a cost effective means of providing resources to America’s young people who are forced to live on the streets and WOW will leave a permanent and indelible mark on the standard of care for adolescents who are forced to live outside of their natural homes
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