Hope for Miami's Men Up: Empowering Fathers

Over the 25 years of Hope for Miami’s existence, we have specialized in “filling gaps” or meeting unmet community needs. Here is our history of unique services, past and present (and our hopes for the future).

• In 2005, we started the first afterschool program to serve Deaf children. A group of Deaf students was integrated at the site with their hearing peers, and everyone learned Sign Language. We had staff with fluency in Sign Language who could meet the children’s social/emotional needs and not experience isolation with just an Interpreter and no peers. 
• Hope for Miami was a founding partner of the Service Network for Children of Inmates – reconnecting the children through family bonding visits to the prison where their incarcerated parent resides. 
• Setting up year-round programs to ensure that high school students with a disability have access to programs focusing on independent living and transitions to adulthood. 
• We are taking other grassroots non-profits (especially faith-based groups) under our wing so that social service programs can expand throughout Miami-Dade County. 
• Expanding free youth mental health awareness workshops during the pandemic, when so many youth were isolated at home. 
• Partnering with our public school system to reconnect children who stopped attending school during the pandemic – through home visits and providing resources to their parents.
• The first agency to expand parenting programs to focus on the unique needs of fathers. 
• Selected as a partner with FIU to provide new literacy services to kids with dyslexia.