New Pathways, Inc.
provides counseling, independent living and developmental opportunities for
Maryland youth emerging from foster care system.
New
Pathways has many success stories, but one that exemplifies the caliber and
quality of the services is from
Ms. Shantel Randolph
As
her mother struggled with addiction, Shantel Randolph was shuttled in and out of
foster care. She bounced between living with her aunt and her mother until
finally, at age 17, she came to reside at New Pathways.
She lived in one of our apartments with other older foster youth until she
turned 21 and "aged out" of the child welfare system.
Today,
at age 26,
Randolph
is on track. Married for more than two years, she is the mother of a toddler
son. Now, she is a Fellow at Open Society Institute- Baltimore where she uses her fellowship to help other young
youth in
foster care successfully move to adulthood. For the past year,
Randolph
has been working with a group of 15 to 18 students at the
Baltimore
Freedom
Academy
who are either in foster care or aging out of care. They participate in her
program called "Foster Youth Incorporated" or FYI, and she plans to
expand it to at least four other high schools. The aim is to empower foster
youth to tell their stories and advocate for improvements to
Maryland
’s foster care system. As of February 2007 she became a Mentor for the
Peer-to-Peer Mentoring program at New Pathways, Inc.
"By creating a safe place for our foster youth to
express themselves, they can creatively strive toward maintaining a stable,
balanced life after high school," she says.
New
Pathways, Inc.