A Message from the Executive Director
As we near almost 20 years of the Young Center’s vital advocacy to advance and protect immigrant children’s rights, I am inspired by the ways our community has come together in 2023 to strategically map our plans to deepen the Young Center’s impact and truly live out our values in the immediate years to come. Together, alongside the Young Center’s Board of Directors, we crafted a 5-Year Strategic Plan that not only sets forth our big picture visions, goals and aspirations, but also tangible ways we will enhance our support for children between now and 2027 that are critically grounded in our values of courage, equity and justice, child-centeredness, accompaniment, and community.
This past year was marked by critical efforts to formalize organizational partnerships that ensure our support for children extends beyond just their time in federal custody. After officially launching our Technical Assistance Program only a year ago in late 2022, our team sprang into action, investing in relationships with leading organizations outside the immigrant advocacy spaces, such as Casey Family Programs and Seneca Family of Agencies, whose substantive areas of practice intersect with immigrant children. Through this allyship and collective advocacy, we continue to ground the Young Center as one element in a larger ecosystem that is working together to ensure immigrant children and their families receive holistic support.
In 2023, we also proudly introduced a new pilot initiative —led by our team of strategic communications experts — that invests in creative, ethical, and safe storytelling initiatives in which immigrant children can engage. Our Ethical Storytelling Pilot is rooted not only in our commitment to honor immigrant children’s voices but also in our responsibility to create tangible opportunities for children to share about their lives, experiences, and stories in their own words.
There is no doubt that these were major accomplishments in 2023; and while we celebrate these extraordinary strides forward, we are also holding space to show up for one another and our partners through immense grief. The tragic deaths of Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, Jismary Alejandra Barboza Gonzalez, Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza –only some of the immigrant children who died in 2023– were the fatal consequence of our nation’s increasingly restrictive immigration policies that continue to make it more dangerous for individuals, families, and children to seek safety in the U.S. Whether it´s inside border facilities like the one in which Anadith passed away, or inside the mass charter buses on which Texas has cruelly placed families, including Jismary and her mother, children and their loved ones have faced deadly conditions without access to essential human services, including proper medical care.
Part of our effort to fight for justice for these children and their families requires us all to recognize the ways our country’s immigration policy increasingly values “curbing” immigration more than protecting human life. When we come together to acknowledge this and share in the sorrow and grief of this work, we also create opportunities for us to see ourselves as part of a much more expansive community that can lean on each other and fuel one another in the pursuit of justice. Immigrant children, as we know, exist in and are impacted by a much bigger ecosystem than just federal custody.
The challenges they experienced before and the hurdles they will experience after custody require solutions rooted in community. The partnerships we have fostered over this year and the intersectional work we will undoubtedly engage in in the years to come will ensure that immigrant children, no matter where they land, are met with the care, compassion, and tenderness they deserve.
With Gratitude,
Gladis Molina Alt
Executive Director