Imani House

Our mission is "to assist low-income youth, families, and immigrants to create sustainable neighborhoods where residents are decision makers who take responsibility for the improvement of their lives and surroundings."

 

IMANI HOUSE is an award winning tax-exempt non-profit known for its free innovative youth and family support services in Brooklyn, NY and Liberia, West Africa. The program was started in Liberia, as a result of that nation's civil war. The first official Liberian program was a home for displaced children. On one of her many visits back to the US to secure funding for Liberia, Bisi Ideraabdullah , the agency founder and Executive Director, decided to start a program in Brooklyn as well. Our first Brooklyn program was an Adult Literacy initiative.

 

IMANI HOUSE was founded by Bisi Ideraabdullah and a group of grassroots professionals, to offer tangible services and support to marginalized Liberian and Brooklyn communities.

 

NY Services

Youth Enhancement and Development Projects

• IHI / PS/ MS 282 After-School Program - This is an enrichment program for at risk youth in grades Pre- K to 6 that fosters academic, physical, social and emotional development through homework assistance and tutoring, performance arts and athletics.  It serves over 150 children annually.

Employment and Career Services

• In 2005, IMANI HOUSE established a partnership with the Brooklyn Workforce One Career Center and other employment training and counseling services to help unemployed immigrants and marginalized community members to secure skills, information and access to employment, counseling, and other necessary services such as: basic computer training, life skills development, career exploration, resume and interview preparation, internet job search skills, and other. The program serves about 400 community residents per year.

Adult Education Program

• Offers group and one-on-one classes of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), Reading and Comprehension, Writing, Pre-GED, Math (Literacy), Job referral and training network with Workforce 1 Career Center and others; Life Skills, Civics, HIV Prevention, Counseling, Computers, GED Test Prep Classes, Immigration and Legal Referrals; Volunteer Recruitment, Training, Certification, Placement, and other. Serves approximately 120 Brooklyn residents per year.

Community Outreach and Empowerment

• Information & Referral Service – IMANI HOUSE has developed a wide network of collaborating agencies that offer legal, immigration, domestic violence, HIV assistance, housing, continuing education, social services and other assistance. In 2011, IHI offered referrals to over 3,000 individuals who walked in, called or emailed our office.

 

Liberia Programs

The IHI Jahtondo Town Maternal and Child Health Clinic

• Serves over 16,000 women and children, and a small percentage of men, in the last 12 months. Integrated health services along with baby and pregnant mother's immunization for polio, diptheria, BCG, yellow fever, measles, tetanus and filarial, were offered.  All immunization are offered free of charge.  Our health staff also participated in the Ministry of Health's (MOH) massive Polio Vaccine eradication campaign, spreading out into the farthest points of Brewerville and the Po River District to vaccinate 3,025 people against polio.

Adult Education programs

• Offers free classes to approximately 200 mostly market women each year. This program offers reading, writing, math, and civic education four days a week at the J.W. Pearlson Elem. School on Carey Street; the St. Paul Bridge Daycare Elem. School at the St. Paul's Bridge, and at Duala and Rally-Time Markets.  Women's empowerment is the main objective of our educational program, with some emphasis on women's rights, human rights and personal and community responsibility.

Teen HIV/Pregnancy Peer Education Project

• This program trains Liberian female students to present health awareness information.  We go directly into the Public School classrooms where we are given one class period to interact with girls and boys and talk on topics including: the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases; care of their bodies and reproduction rights along with the use of various protection mechanisms, abstention, family planning, and other topics of interest to them relative to their futures.