The Door’s Career and Education programs are designed to help young people achieve long-term self-sufficiency by preparing them for success in college and/or the workforce through integrated education and sector-specific career training. We work with young people to build the skills they need for success at work and in life, and we partner with employers committed to developing long-term workforces to connect young people to talent pipelines.

Our dedicated teams worked quickly to address the digital divide by providing laptops, high-speed internet access, and other necessary technology to ensure that young people could participate in interviews and workshops. In addition, we added a digital literacy component to our training programs and we expanded our reach to include more sustainable industries to get and keep young people connected to in-demand sectors.

The Door has long been a safe place for young people experiencing housing instability. Members have access to a wide range of basic needs (laundry, food, showers, clothing, hygiene supplies) and can connect with caring staff who support them in navigating immediate crisis needs and longer-term connection to resources and housing. Our two off-site supportive housing sites provide 24/7 staffing and resources for residents.

This year, our staff remained available for young people, both physically and virtually. They created new online systems, launched a food pantry and expanded access to basic needs, and transformed their office spaces into technology hubs to ensure that members had safe, private spaces to access virtual resources like mental health counseling, classes, and job interviews. Our supportive housing staff remained on site and available to young people throughout the year, ensuring that residents were safe and had what they needed. Additionally, staff from throughout the organization came together to support the critical work of providing essential services for young people, exemplifying the sense of community that makes The Door so powerful.

The Bronx Youth Center (BYC), The Door’s first programmatic satellite site, makes accessing our services much more convenient for Bronx residents. Though focused on Career and Education services, the BYC has a wide range of programs, deep community partnerships, and is poised to expand its physical footprint.

Throughout the year, the staff at the BYC continued to respond to immediate community needs by creating additional resources, including an on-site food pantry and clothing closet and by adapting programming to respond to the interests of their members. They partnered with local organizations to meet the needs of new parents and assisted a record number of young people in earning their high school equivalency diplomas and gaining college admission.

The Door’s Legal Services Center provides free legal representation and support in civil legal matters, with a specialization in immigration law. The incredible rise in the need for immigration support has led to unprecedented growth for our legal services center. Our staffing has expanded to include paralegals and social workers, and our work has grown to include representation of young people in federal detention facilities.

Our dedicated staff handled a record number of cases over the course of an incredibly challenging year, including assisting in securing green cards for young people and preventing unlawful deportations. The team also expanded their reach, taking on work specifically in support of survivors of gender-based violence, increasing language accessibility to better serve French speaking clients, and deepening their policy and advocacy work.

The Door’s community engagement programs include our dynamic arts programming, offering creative outlets for our members and discipline-specific growth opportunities for emerging artists, a wide range of community and recreational programming, and our phenomenal youth leadership program.

The Door’s Programming team innovatively responded to the needs and interests of our members during a time in which creating community was both more important and more difficult than ever. The team created a text line that grew into a robust survey tool, allowing The Door to be even more responsive to immediate needs, and allowing us to connect to 7,487 individuals through 29,276 texts. Virtual membership brought an increase in new members and in accessibility, and the youth leadership program grew substantially, adding more youth voice to our program design. Our arts team partnered with local institutions to create outdoor performance opportunities that allowed us to gather safely and continue to cultivate the joy that makes The Door so special.