Brad Whitaker
By Tunde Wey
November 9, 2012
The story of
Alternatives for Girls is best served numerically and anecdotally. The numbers are as impressive as the stories are moving.
Amy Good was living in Corktown by the old Tigers Stadium on Trumbull and Michigan Avenue when she began noticing young women in the streets. This was in 1985, a year after the Tigers had won the World Series, when the signs of hope in the city were tainted by the looming tragedy of economic and social decline. That year Detroit was host to the prestigious Grand Prix and was also crowned with the now-infamous designation of "murder capital," having the
highest murder rate of the nation’s largest cities. The grim reality, witnessed by Good and her cohort of concerned residents and community members, was a scene of vulnerable young women who were homeless, abusing drugs and alcohol, affiliated with gangs and being sexually exploited.
These were the beginnings of AFG. Good founded the organization as a humble attempt to address these overbearing problems. AFG was launched in a neighborhood church basement and offered emergency shelter to young women in need.
“They began with community-based prevention programming and soon after that street outreach – finding out what the needs of the young girls were and letting them know about the organizations they could get assistance from,” says Brad Whitaker, Chief Operating Officer for AFG. “A shelter came later.” While in those early days the impetus for AFG to act was the immediate need in the community, there was a harsher reality that was only barely evident at the time – the widespread nature and pervasiveness of the problems of street activity among young women.
Nationally, 1 in 50 children are homeless. Unaccompanied youth and youth aging out of foster care make up a significant portion of Detroit’s homeless population. These most vulnerable and maybe least resource-affiliated groups are AFG’s area of specialization.
AFG provides shelter, professional counseling and life skills training to homeless young women. They shelter minors, young and expectant mothers, and young women between the ages of 15 and 21 years old. Their facilities serve as a transitional space. They shelter housing occupants into stable homes, or in the case of minors reunite them with their families. Of the minors served, 95 percent have been reunited with their families and another 91 percent of the girls and young women have been able to secure safe and stable housing. Last year alone AFG sheltered 148 young women.
Equally as important as the sheltering service, AFG’s Community-Based Prevention Program works to reverse trends that make young women vulnerable and homeless. Last year, through summer and after school programs, study groups, and girls clubs like
Young Women Changing Communities (a youth leadership training program co- sponsored by
The Skillman Foundation), AFG served 235 at-risk youth.
Over the past 11 years, 98 percent of the young women served through AFG’s Community-Based Prevention Program graduated from high school and went on to college.
Whitaker says there is sometimes confusion with the “at-risk” tag. “Some people outside the agency sometimes think these kids are troubled, but the ‘at risk’ status covers a broad range [of challenges facing the young women],” he explains. “Those kids are deemed at-risk for a variety of reasons – sometimes the location where they live might make them at risk to exposure to violence and unhealthy sexual behaviors, even if their families are stable.” Over the past 11 years, 98 percent of the young women served through AFG’s Community-Based Prevention Program graduated from high school and went on to college.
Another core service offered by AFG, rounding out their Shelter and Community-Based Prevention programming, is their Street Outreach and Educational Service.
Human trafficking is a considerable problem nationally. According to a 2011
Justice Department Study, about 40 percent of trafficking cases pursued during the study period involved children. Whitaker provides some alarming local context to the problem. “You don’t have to be moved from one country to another to be trafficked – it is a matter of someone dominating you for their personal gain,” he explains. People are trafficked for labor and most of what we experience is sex labor. Detroit is one of the major cities in the country for sex trafficking. For a street-based sex worker, the average age when they get started is 14 – that should tell anybody who has any sense that a 14-year-old who is looking for extra income is not looking at sex, so someone else pulled them into that.”
The facts are chilling:
Manna Freedom, a national organization fighting to end human trafficking, lists Detroit as among the top ten cities in the U.S. for human trafficking. Even more sobering is the fact that the FBI puts the average age at which children are sexually exploited at 11 and the age of entry for girls into prostitution at 13.
AFG's New Choices program, an integral part of their educational services, is a support group for young women looking to exit commercial sex work. 75 percent of active participants in this program have been successful in maintaining safe housing.
The organization will reach over 3,700 at-risk girls through its different programs, providing them with basic needs such as food and clothing, transportation to safe places, and direct referrals to support services. Last year it logged over 867 hours of street outreach.
Whitaker, whose experience as a pastor for 25 years before joining AFG provided numerous instances to rejoice at the miracle of human resilience, is humbled by the incredible importance of his work, which he describes as "providing shelter and a safe space for someone who is so vulnerable and in some cases invisible to the larger world."
Even though the work of AFG is impressive as told in the story of their statistics, it’s in the other half of their success story that isn’t so easily quantifiable – the experiences of the young women they serve and the staff who work with them – that their impact is truly manifested. Whitaker says, "The glory of a person is really when they are fully alive, and when that is happening by the choices we at Alternatives for Girls are giving them, it is rewarding and exciting."
Photograph by Marvin Shaouni Photography.