ASLAN INC
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Mission Statement
The mission of Aslan Youth Ministries is, through God’s love, to effect permanent change in the hearts and minds of at-risk youth in America and Haiti. We provide relationship-based programs that permanently impact the bodies, minds and spirits of disadvantaged, urban children and empower them to overcome their negative environments and circumstances and become productive and successful members of society. Aslan takes the “risk” out of children at risk!
About This Cause
Aslan Youth Ministries was founded in 1975 by Craig and Lynn Ann Bogard to help meet the needs of children in need, in Monmouth County, NJ and later to include the country of Haiti. Our vision, our hope, is stated on the side of our big, blue bus which provides door-to-door transportation for the children we serve: "ASLAN...Changing the world, one child at a time." After almost a half century of loving and encouraging urban, at-risk children, we have been living proof that black lives matter long before it became popularized as a movement. Thousands of young people have come through our doors. Hundreds and hundreds of families have been helped. Racial reconciliation has come about time and again, as volunteers’ eyes have been opened to the needs our children & families face every day. In order to accomplish this, we provide year-round programming in four different communities, which include Red Bank, Long Branch, Asbury Park and Neptune, New Jersey. We also offer weekly "right choices" character education classes, where children are taught such things as self-respect and self-control, care and concern for others and the importance of proper decision making. We also offer one-on-one tutoring with a highly trained tutor mentor. These are volunteers who are thoroughly vetted and trained by Aslan leadership and assigned to work one-on-one with students to provide remediation in reading and math. It also serves as an opportunity for our volunteers to make a lasting difference in the lives of children who are lagging behind in their studies, due to multiple challenges. We do this because we have found building a long lasting relationship with a caring adult is one of the best and most effective ways to help children who are living in poverty and experiencing daily challenges at home and in school. Then, when school ends, our summer day camps begin. Each summer, we pack a ton of fun and learning into two-week long camps for each of our area programs. Children enjoy field trips two days a week to such places as the beach, a community garden, and a planetarium. The other three days are spent doing arts and crafts, learning science experiments, or a new language. Children also receive a nutritious lunch provided by our local partners and sponsors. Additionally, each summer, Aslan sponsors 25-30 children to attend Camp Lebanon, a one-week summer camp in northwest New Jersey. Lebanon is a wonderful place with for our youth where all the values we work on with them during the year are concentrated into a week of boating, arts & crafts, archery, horseback riding, devotionals, swimming and lots of fun! Believing in the importance of exposing our children to a larger world, we offer enrichment activities including a cooking class, a garden club, biking and hiking outings, and college tours. In 2003, Aslan began renting a house in Ouanaminthe, North Eastern Haiti along the border of the Dominican Republic. In 2004, Aslan purchased 6 acres of land in L’Acajou, about 2 miles south of Ouanaminthe. So far, Aslan has built a fully-functional medical clinic, staffed by a doctor and several nurses who attend to the health needs of the poorest of the poor daily. We also have a feeding program, called "Grains of Grace," funded by our partner, "Step of Faith Ministry," which provides rice and beans to people who, without it, might only eat every other day at best. We have built an education center and a village school. We installed a clean water well in 2014 which provides clean water to families in the entire area. Currently, Aslan reaches over 500 families in the area of L'Acajou. During several holidays (Mother's and Father's Day, Thanksgiving, etc.) we gather food baskets and provide our families in both NJ and Haiti with meals and gifts. During Christmas we add a toy for a child and at the beginning of the school year, we provide back packs. Volunteers donate "wish list" items which are then wrapped and sorted and distributed to many smiling faces! Again, accompanying the gifts, are bags of food which the families gratefully receive. In 2020, we are facing a very serious challenge of serving our children during the COVID-19 pandemic. The children are not always in a safe and nurturing environment at home, and learning is extremely difficult with limited access to the Internet, tablets and PC's. Most of our children do not have these items, and we have had to do drive by visits and deliver food to the families. In Haiti, the situation is becoming even more challenging since the border with the Dominican Republic is closed because of the pandemic. Our concern is heightened and we believe the people living in the village will begin to suffer even more with the effects of extreme poverty, sickness and unhealthy living conditions, because the rest of the world will start cutting back on aide to these countries. We are serving and saving families now on a very limited budget, but we anticipate this will become even more limited and the needs of this community will significantly increase to the point where people will die. It haunts us every day. We are very thankful to our many excellent volunteers and generous donors, who partner with us to make a lasting impact in the lives of the disadvantaged. We would be unable to do what we do without that help.