International Organization for Adolescents Incorporated

IOFA is a small, independent nonprofit working to improve the lives of young people around the world and to reduce the vulnerability of youth to forms of severe exploitation. It was founded in New York City in 1999 to respond to the gap in programming and services for vulnerable adolescents, such as youth in foster care, orphans, and victims of trafficking. Currently based in Chicago, IOFA works in partnership with local service providers to develop and implement holistic programs targeting all stages of risk and exploitation, from the point of prevention to the need for effective response.

We’re a group of practitioners in the fields of social work, public health, public policy, and law working collaboratively to improve the lives of young people by addressing critical and emerging issues affecting vulnerable adolescents around the world. Our vision is for a world where adolescents and youth are able to exercise their human rights and to realize their full potential as positive and productive members of society without fear of exploitation, violence, or neglect.

We accomplish our mission by:

• building institutional capacity to address complex child and adolescent welfare issues
• working holistically to coordinate stakeholders in social service, law enforcement, the courts, healthcare, and other systems
• advancing evidence-based program design and groundbreaking research
• developing scalable and replicable project models
• operating with minimal infrastructure to maximize local ownership

 

Over its 15-year history, IOFA has implemented 35 projects in 22 countries. Current project highlights include:

ChildRight New York, initiated in 2013 with support from New York State's Office of Children & Family Services (OCFS) is a comprehensive, multi-pronged intervention designed to build child welfare response to child trafficking statewide. To date, the project has trained more than 1,500 child-serving professionals in social service, law enforcement, juvenile justice, health care and education in eight counties, including New York City. The project has also provided technical assistance to 27 agencies working with child victims of trafficking and engaged more than 100 key stakeholders across the state in developing a blueprint for building child welfare response to child trafficking.

Since 2012, IOFA has coordinated and facilitated Cook County's Human Trafficking Task Force on behalf of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. The interdisciplinary Task Force consists of 30 agencies, ranging from the FBI to local law enforcement, social service providers, policy experts, and legal advocates. This year, IOFA developed and implemented an online Coordinated Service Referral Network for the Task Force, which will facilitate collaboration between agencies fighting human trafficking in Chicago.  

IOFA has also partnered with the Research Triangle Institute and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago on a five-year research project to address the under-reporting of minor victim sex trafficking in Illinois. IOFA is collecting qualitative data from across the state in the first two years of the study to identify causes of under-reporting and systemic barriers to identifying and serving victims of child sex trafficking.