FRIENDS OF HUDSON YOUTH INC

Description

Friends of Hudson Youth (FoHY) was founded in 2018 by a small group of local residents to fortify the Hudson Youth Department (HYD). We recognized that the HYD was a vital resource for the Hudson community, providing urgently needed childcare and recreation along with nutritional, academic, social, and emotional supports to Hudson’s kids and their families, and that it needed additional community support to leverage what the city could provide in order to thrive.

Since 2018 we have funded after-school and summer workshops at the HYD in art, music, sound production, videography, dance, circus arts, and environmental education, and provided equipment for the HYD Computer Lab. All HYD programs allow for different learning styles and abilities and everyone is treated with dignity.

We sponsor, with support from local businesses, the HYD’s free recreational Soccer and Basketball leagues that provide physical development and the many well-documented positive effects associated with organized sports. We funded the creation of a Bike Co-op at Oakdale Park. The core offering of this free drop-in program is an "Earn-A-Bike" Program for youth who would not otherwise have the means to own a bike. They work alongside skilled mechanics and fully break down and rebuild a donated bike, proudly "earning" a bike of their own. We also support the lifeguard program, which provides a comprehensive free training program and summer employment for a diverse group of local teens.