Justin Pasquariello

2002

Justin Pasquariello

Adoption & Foster Care Mentoring (AFC Mentoring)

http://www.afcmentoring.org

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

When 18-year-olds age out of foster care, sixty-six percent of them have not finished high school. Twenty-five percent will become homeless at some point in their lives. Massachusetts has nearly 10,000 children in foster care and even more who are adopted.

AFC Mentoring is one of the only programs that exclusively serves adopted and foster youth. We are among the few that seek to match these youths with adults who have shared experiences, when possible. AFC Mentoring has the mission to empower adopted and foster youth to flourish through committed mentoring relationships.

AFC accomplishes its mission through three programs: AFCMentors, a one-to-one mentoring program which matches adult volunteer mentors with youth in care; TeamAFC, a group mentoring initiative that gives youth in care a sense of community, consistency, and positive interaction with adults and youth; and AFCInterns, an internship program that allows youth in care to gain professional skills and encourages personal growth and goal setting. Volunteers can help us through our AFCVolunteers department, a program supporting our community of youth in care in many areas. AFC Mentoring serves youth ages 7 to 22 who have personal experiences in foster care, adoption, kinship or residential care and who are from the Greater Boston area.

Biography:

A former foster youth and adoptee, Justin graduated from Harvard College cum laude in 2001, and began the work for AFC directly after.  He has served on a church young adult advisory group and on a young adult advisory group to the mayor of Boston.  He is currently studying finance for social change through a concurrent degree program at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and plans to start a company that will invest to advance the most effective social change strategies. 

During his time at Harvard, Pasquariello will also participate in a cocurricular program for the Reynolds Foundation Fellows designed by the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership that focuses on leadership development and professional skill building.