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BETHLEHEM, PA 6\/11\/2018<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Valley Youth House has received a Major Grant of $15,000 from the Provident Bank Foundation to help\u00a0underwrite programming to benefit homeless Lehigh Valley youth ages 18-24 who are being served by the Valley Youth House Supportive Housing Program (SHP).<\/span> For this reason, each youth is connected with a Life Skills Counselor with whom they meet weekly. Together, they design an Individual Service Plan with a timeline for achieving their goals. The counselors work one-on-one with youth in the program to help them develop the soft and hard skills necessary to achieve independence in such areas as employment readiness; housing education; banking and budgeting; parenting; and utilization of community resources.\u00a0 In 2017, the program supported 54 youth and 52 infants\/children.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe young people who will be served\u00a0are often pregnant or parenting youth, live in their own apartments while working with program staff to achieve their goals for high school completion\/post-secondary training, employment and transition to stable housing. The youth being served have been homeless and living on the streets and\u00a0their experiences have\u00a0caused trauma and a host of life challenges.<\/span><\/p>\n