Our Vision and Mission
Our Mission
The mission of Good Shepherd Services is to surround at-risk New York City youth and their families with a web of supports that promote a safe passage to self-sufficiency. To achieve our mission, we lead in the development of innovative youth development programs; provide quality, effective services that strengthen participants' connections with family, school and community; and advocate on their behalf for broader change.
Our Theory of Change
Serving more than 20,000 program participants annually, Good Shepherd Services (GSS) seeks to address the needs of children and youth growing up in some of the highest-poverty communities of New York City, who are reaching adulthood unprepared, with little hope and capacity for long-term success. We target youth ages 0-25 who are disconnected or at risk of becoming disconnected and who are academically, economically and socially vulnerable, lacking the resources, ability to cope and interpersonal skills to make a successful transition to adulthood. Recognizing the human consequences, lost promise and costs to society of ignoring their plight, we work to break the cycle of negative outcomes for at-risk youth by investing in their potential.
The overarching principles of our broad array of programs are to promote:
Safety: keeping youth and their families out of harm's way
Belonging: helping youth build strong connections to family/nurturing adults, supportive peers, school and the broader community
Skill-Building: helping youth build a wide range of developmentally appropriate competencies.
All of our services are designed to ensure a more promising future for our program participants and are driven by our profound belief in the strengths inherent in youth and the ability of individuals and families to transform themselves. Working from this strength-based youth development perspective, we surround at-risk youth and their families with comprehensive services and supports. We work within the context of family/caregivers and the community, partnering with other public and private institutions to attain our goals. As a learning organization, we set high expectations for ourselves and continuously define, implement and evaluate best practices that help us achieve our mission.
GSS programs are designed to yield the following outcomes for participants:
Demonstration of emotional and physical safety
Indicators of positive connections within and external to the program settings
Demonstration of developmentally appropriate competencies/skills
In summary, we believe that if we deliver quality programs that emphasize safety, foster the development of age appropriate skills and competencies, help to build strong connections and reinforce consistent, sustained participation, then youth who participate will be more likely to be successful in making a developmentally appropriate passage to self-sufficiency, which is our ultimate goal.
Core Values
Click here to learn more about Good Shepherd’s Core Values, our basic philosophy.
Common Goal
Our diverse programs are united by the common goal that underlies all of our activities: to help vulnerable youth and families make a safe passage to self-sufficiency.
