Empowering Youth and Families Outreach

EYFO provides services to several different populations. We provide supportive, preventative programs for at risk youth. Certified teachers, social workers, para professionals and college students who attend Seattle Pacific University provide tutoring in reading, math, science and computer skills. Each day youth are engaged in enrichment classes including, art, drama, dance, step, sports and computers. EYFO provides daily topics and students are involved in healthy discussions, which include information pertinent to the challenges our youth face in today’s society. EYFO accomplishes this by providing a healthy environment that is safe, caring and enriching for young people. Mentors focus on each youth’s assets while instilling values, ethics and character. We continue to measure success based on the number of youth who return to our various programs as well at the pre-post evaluations given prior to the start of the program and at completion. Success is also measured based on the number of families who return each year to volunteer as well as the number of youth who return to mentor other youth. Many of the youth who have began with us in elementary school have continued on to college and come back to volunteer with our programs. To date we have had several alumni who were considered at risk to graduate with their B.A. or Masters, and receive scholarships to Washington State University, John Hopkins University, California Lutheran University, Hampton University, ITT tech, Seattle Central College, Bellevue College, Scripps College, Seattle University, Seattle Central and the University of Washington. We are proud of each of these student’s accomplishments. Our retention of 85% of volunteers since we were incorporate also speaks of how well we are serving our community.

Empowering Youth and Families facilitates programs for youth preschool-college. The founders, John and Charlett Shoecraft, have over 25 years of experience running community based programs for youth and families. EYFO was birthed as we recognized that today’s youth and their families face tough challenges that can sometimes lead to making difficult choices. As a result, the consequences are often tragic and can have long lasting effects. EYFO’s vision for the youth we serve is to create a positive model for kids to pattern themselves after, and to train and equip our youth to have strong values and principles as a foundation for their lives. For the last 17 years, EYFO has worked to fulfill this mission by providing services for over 5,000 youth and their families who participate in our leadership development, educational programs, health and wellness, career readiness, college prep, service learning, mentoring, out of school times programming, business market place, overnight camps and parenting workshops. EYFO provides year round literacy /leadership programs to low-income at-risk youth in Greater King County of Seattle. EYFO facilitates outreach programs to youth and their families. We target families who come from varying economic backgrounds; many of our youth are at-risk and come from predominantly low-income single parent households, homelessness, foster care, and parents of youth who are incarcerated. Our educational literacy program is offered to youth who are the most at risk. Our program has helped many youth who live below the poverty level, in single parent homes with little adult supervision, providing a safe environment for youth to retreat to. The summer literacy program allows us to impact youth who often are doing poorly in school and who are losing academic ground.