A SAFE HOME FOR ENDANGERED YOUTH

The Executive Director’s Vision
Each year hundreds of youth runaway from home in Whatcom County, for a variety of reasons, and have no safe place to go or family to turn to. Though many can find a couch or two to sleep on, there is no reliable and safe place in Whatcom County for them to go. The Positive Adolescent Development Program (The PAD) will provide all runaway and homeless minors with a safe and nurturing environment they can rely on. It will be a place where youth will receive the support they need through advocacy, empowerment and innovative approaches to life’s challenges. Northwest Youth Services envisions a society that values its youth while promoting their healthy development. We believe in the potential for all people to grow and change. The PAD will provide the opportunity and tools necessary to facilitate that process.

Adolescence is an important time of transition, and the NWYS PAD program will provide the compassion, encouragement and support needed to heal family relationships (if possible), and facilitate the youths returning home. The abuse, neglect, and trauma the youth are running from can be so devastating and toxic that youth are left with no support but what their community can offer. At this time Whatcom County has no safe place for them.

This vulnerable population will have new resources available to them through the PAD program. Not only will they have a safe, clean, dry, and warm place to sleep but they will also have a Drop-In center which will provide laundry facilities, showers, and three meals a day; for all runaway and homeless minors in Whatcom County. In addition, we will provide youth educational, vocational, family, and emotional support in an effort to reunite them with their families and reconnect the youth to our community as vital members of society.

Riannon Bardsley
Executive Director NWYS

Call 360.734.9862 ext.116 to learn about how we’re getting kids off the streets in 2012!

Please follow this link to become a Partner of P.A.D. with a donation of labor, material, or financial contribution.

In light of any disabilities requiring further assistance for program accessibility, please contact our office at 360.734.9862 or visit us at 1020 North State Street.  TDD relay services number 1800-833-6388