Youth Homelessness Resource Center

Advising One Youth at a Time

Youth Homelessness is a Real Thing [ui98xF2ESxw].webm

Key Contacts

Zafir Naseem, Youth Crisis Line Director

Ayman Nassar, Chief Academics & Solutions Architect

Supporting Services

Personalized coaching is available for those interested in the services listed below. For more information, visit the EmpowerOne website at empowerone.islamicleadership.org

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Youth Homelessness: A Problem with Multiple Tentacles

Karim* is a 17-year-old high school senior who suddenly found himself homeless. With top grades and practicing Muslim parents – his background is probably much more relatable than you might expect. Islamic Leadership Institute of America (ILIA) believes in lending a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.

That’s why we created the Youth Crisis Line in 2015 – a telephone number for any young person going through challenges from faith questions and depression, to homelessness and suicidal thoughts.

Karim texted the crisis line, and within 24 hours he had a warm bed to sleep in at ILIA’s Dorm, a nurturing environment, and a peace of mind. He could continue his online school, and do his employer’s work.

This is a real-story that happens more often than you think, right here in our Muslim communities, and across America. The numbers are staggering, in a city like Baltimore the average number of unaccompanied minors on a given night is close to 600 teenagers. That is 600 sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grand daughters and grand sons. For one reason or another they were unable to stay at their homes. The reasons vary and are diverse. Our paper, “Root Causes of Youth Homelessness“, covers common reasons these young individuals are unable to find a roof over their head, many times for no fault of their own.

The good news is that there are solutions from our faith, which can leverage the latest approaches in youth coaching and development, with high rates of success. We outline some of these solutions in our paper, “Solutions and Initiatives for Youth Homelessness“. These solutions need further research and analysis. We invite you to learn more about the topic of youth homelessness by browsing through some of the resources available at this center.

About the Resource Center

Founded in April 2021, Youth Homelessness Resource Center serves as a main repository for ILIA developed, as well as third party information, tools and service providers to mitigate the issue of youth homelessness. The center comprises research literature defining the issue, identifying root causes, presenting solutions and conducting progressive research on a continuous basis to ensure solutions remain current and relevant. The center also provides contact information for various organizations which complement each other for a larger more complete care.

Youth Homelessness Resource Center is funded through the generous contributions of community members from across the country, and most of the content developed by ILIA are output of youth research projects. We invite you to sign up to the center’s mail-list to stay abreast of upcoming events, new publications and resources.