COVID-19

'NY Post' Features Friends of Island Academy Youth Advocate as Hero of the Day

Editor's note:

Friends of Island Academy (FOIA), a grantee of the Office of Government and Community Affairs (GCA), recently had one of their youth advocates recognized by the New York Post for their "Hero of the Day" spotlight. FOIA has been a recipient of a workforce grant from GCA for the past three years and has recently had five of their Career Center participants placed in the current cohort of the User Research Lab (UxR) Fellowship that GCA also supports. 

By
Gabrielle Fonrouge (New York Post)
April 27, 2020
Woman with a backpack standing in a park during the day

At two hours to midnight, on a cold, wind-swept March night in coronavirus locked-down Manhattan’s Union Square, Carmelita Osborne is a woman on a mission. 

The 33-year-old senior youth advocate with Friends of Island Academy works with incarcerated teens and young adults. That night she heard from her colleague there was a 19-year-old who'd been sleeping on the subways and was too scared to enter the notorious Bellevue Men’s Shelter. 

Even though she’s asthmatic and at a high risk for COVID-19, Osbourne told him to come meet her and brought along a backpack that’d help soften the blow of entering the shelter system. 

Read more in the New York Post.