Students in the classroom

The HOPE Program helps New Yorkers transcend poverty and prepares them to find, keep, and grow careers. By blending vocational, educational, and social services with a lifelong commitment to a person's growth, HOPE demonstrates that poor New Yorkers can create better lives for themselves and their families.

Our mission is two-fold: to help individuals living in extreme poverty achieve economic self-sufficiency and to inform practices by sharing our research and solutions.

Our direct services program, HOPEworks, fulfills the first part of our mission and encompasses work readiness training, job placement, job retention, and career advancement services. Through HOPEworks, students are prepared to compete in today's workforce. Additionally, an array of on-site support services is provided including: mental health therapy; legal counseling; food and clothing; and assistance in obtaining housing, childcare, medical, and transitional work benefits.

Greater Impact is the second part of HOPE's mission. We conduct in-depth research on the underlying causes of our clients' chronic unemployment and use our findings to fine-tune our own program, train social services practitioners, and educate policy makers.

The Need

In New York City, 1 in 5 people live in poverty. Every week 300,000 New Yorkers rely on soup kitchens and food pantries to feed themselves and their families. Children who grow up poor cost the national economy $500 billion annually because they earn less, have more health-related expenses, commit more crimes, and are less productive.

This is where HOPE comes in. We do not accept the notion that people who live in extreme poverty cannot become economically self-sufficient. In fact, our program proves that with the proper intervention, people living in the margins of society can become full and economically independent members of our city. They can and do provide for themselves and their families.