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At The Crossroads . Rob Gitin robg@atthecrossroads.org 415-517-5458. At The Crossroads (ATC). Introduction. A San Francisco non-profit that reaches out to homeless youth and young adults at their point of need, and works with them to build healthy and fulfilling lives .
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At The Crossroads Rob Gitin robg@atthecrossroads.org415-517-5458
At The Crossroads (ATC) Introduction A San Francisco non-profit that reaches out to homeless youth and young adults at their point of need, and works with them to build healthy and fulfilling lives Street Outreach Counselors: 4 Staff size (2011): 8.5 Annual Budget (2011): $660,000 Since ATC started 13 years ago, we have helped more than 5,500 youth realize their dreams
At The Crossroads (ATC) We help homeless youth move beyond the streets & build outstanding lives We accomplish this through nighttime street outreach, one-to-one counseling, collaboration, and advocacy We help our youth thrive, not just survive We partner with other agencies and local government to ensure there is a strong continuum of care We focus on young people who do not access traditional services We remove barriers by bringing our counselors to the street, and provide unconditional support Mission
At The Crossroads (ATC) How ATC is Different Focus on youth • We focus on youth that are not targeted by other services or have not responded to traditional services • Youth who are disconnected from any type of consistent support Meet youth at their point of need • We walk the streets at night time, going to our clients’ turf, rather than making them come to us Sustainable approach • We work with clients for as long as they want, even after they are off the streets • We focus on listening rather than advising, believing that helping our clients generate their own solutions is the best long-term approach
At The Crossroads (ATC) Why We Need Your Help Support for Youth Support for ATC • The number of youth on SF’s streets continues to grow, along with their material needs (food, clothing, etc.) • In the last two years, demand for our support has risen 200%, while our staff size has shrunk • Our youth require intensive support to move forward in their lives, and this does not come cheaply • We need more counselors to provide SF’s homeless youth with the support they need to move beyond the streets ATC is 100% privately supported; we do not take government money. About 20% ($125,000) of our funding comes from the I Think I Can Campaign and Summer Sunday Hike, which is largely web-driven. An additional 40% ($250,000) comes from donors to our Annual Fund, which is fueled by the Campaign and the Hike. Therefore, our funding is dependent on our Hike and Campaign Websites!
At The Crossroads (ATC) What The Project Is I Think I Can Campaign Summer SunDay Hike • This project will be to develop significant features on our I Think I Can Campaign Site and Summer SunDay Site, working on their databases. This is a wish list, and we understand everything may not get accomplished! • The goals include the following: • Developing a feature to send out automated and manually created emails through the sites • Developing a calendar feature that allows participants to have a personal calendar of activities, and creates an overall Campaign calendar that shows all participant activities • Developing tools that enable participants to easily record and send out video messages • Developing social networking features that make it easy to share any action you take on the site with your social networking communities • Developing a photo gallery feature • Other assorted improvements and smaller new upgrades in functionality
At The Crossroads (ATC) Why it’s a fun project • There is a diversity of tasks, enabling developers to build expertise in a wide range of areas. It will include creating new features using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS • It allows for a lot of creativity. We have our own ideas on how things should work, but are excited to have students take ownership of the project and develop their own ideas. • We have experience working on web development projects, and already have a project management site (Pivotal Tracker) and a subversion host (CVS Dude), so we will be able to hit the ground running. You will get mentorship and support from ArunBhalla, ATC’s volunteer web developer, who has 15 years of development experience • The people involved with ATC are a cool bunch! You’ll get to meet many of them, and we know you’ll like them! • This project would have a tremendous impact on ATC, and therefore a huge impact on homeless youth in San Francisco. These kids really deserve all of the support they can get.