Horizons for Homeless Children

Horizons for Homeless Children was founded in 1988 as an independent organization dedicated exclusively to serving young homeless children and their families. Horizons for Homeless Children touches the lives of more than 2,000 young homeless children each week in Massachusetts through Playspaces (trauma-informed educational and recreational spaces) in shelters and 225 children each day through its high-quality early education program, Boston's only comprehensive, trauma-informed full-time early education and care center specifically for homeless children. Through our two-generational model, our Family Partnerships Program works with the parents of the children enrolled in the early education program from a strengths-based approach, helping them to build on their skills and establish and accomplish goals for success.

Every homeless child will have the opportunity to learn, play, and thrive.

Goal One: To develop and implement a strategic plan for strengthening diversity, equity, and inclusion across the organization.

Goal Two: To strengthen our existing programs to better serve our families, and to expand upon them to serve the increased number of families that we can now serve with the new building.

Goal Three: With the increased space in the new building, to develop and provide more on-site programming for families and children, including through partnerships with other organizations.

Our organization believes strongly in supporting professional development and training of all of our staff. We support on-site training, on-line learning, and contribution to tuition for existing programs. We support efforts of staff to grow within the organization and encourage staff to pursue growth opportunities and leadership positions and we invest is leadership training of our managers and supervisors. One of the investments in leadership development we have made within the past 12-18 months is the establishment, support, and implementation of our 12-member Operating Council, which is comprised of a diverse group of people from across departments tasked with leading the organization and providing input into its operation, administration, and strategic planning, in concert with the executive team.

Horizons had to be very adaptable over the last year. While dealing with the pandemic, and continuing our programming and fundraising efforts, we were also managing a very large construction project and accompanying capital campaign. We also did not want to disrupt our service to children and families experiencing homelessness while trying to keep them, and our staff safe. We had to adjust our construction schedule and work with the construction companies remotely. We had to continue our fundraising efforts remotely, including our large events. The presentation of our spring gala in the spring of 2020, originally planned as an in-person event, had to be turned into a virtual event just a few weeks before the event. We had to learn and adapt quickly from scratch, making major adjustments in a short amount of time. The event ended up being extremely successful and we were very proud of our accomplishment. We were also proud that while we had been concerned fundraising might decline during the pandemic, we continued to engage and solicit donors remotely, and also took advantage of applying for COVID specific funding, which resulted in us actually exceeding our fundraising goals. Programmatically, we implemented strict COVID protocols, developed on-line programs, workshops, and resources, created Outdoor Playspaces so children could still play, and delivered food and toys directly to the families in the shelters. We also responded to the greater external focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion by taking the opportunity to strengthen our own focus on DEI. We created a Board DEI committee, hired a consultant to help us examine DEI within the organization and develop a strategic plan to build on existing efforts. We also created employee-led Employee Resource Groups (Pride, POC, Hispanic/Latinx, and Allies) to provide a safe space for staff to facilitate dialogue, volunteer feedback, and foster leadership opportunities and connections within our community.