A Letter from Our Board Chair

This Fall, we had the opportunity to connect with some of you after two years at Avenues for Justice’s Second Chance Experience. After so much time apart, I was thrilled to honor the hard work of those committed to justice reform and to celebrate the accomplishments of our program Participants and Staff.  

I was especially struck by how deep this commitment runs across all of our various stakeholder groups. Participants like our Second Chance Award recipient, Anastacia, continue to speak out about the impact of their time at Avenues for Justice, encouraging other young people to choose a new path and take advantage of all that AFJ has to offer. Our supporters like this year’s Andrew Glover Justice Award honoree, Jason Flom, use their platforms to speak out about the injustices in our current criminal justice system and to amplify the voices of the wrongfully convicted.  

And then there’s our Staff and our Board of Directors. Over the past two years, our team has helped AFJ’s participants weather several once-in-a-lifetime events, including a global pandemic, an economic downturn, and racial uprisings across our country. Our staff quickly mobilized, implementing online programming to reach not just participants on the Lower East Side and Harlem where our community centers are located, but we expanded to serve young people across the city. Since that time, we have continued to provide citywide services, including court advocacy, job training, and mental health services. None of this would have been possible without our dedicated team and board, and I couldn’t be prouder than I am now to be part of the AFJ family.  

We have much work ahead of us to realize and sustain our vision of a truly just system that offers young people like those served by AFJ the support and services they need.  As much as we have accomplished, we have so much more to do. We hope we can count on your support as we work to make our vision a reality.Your donation will make a meaningful difference in the lives of court-involved young people in New York City. Here are some of the ways your support can help:

We are so grateful to all of you for your continued support and we look forward to working with you in 2023.

All the best,

Alanna Rutherford

Board Chair

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