HAVEN nurtures the success of the whole family on the journey towards stable housing — through joyful child enrichment that alleviates caregiver burdens.
We're an after-school program built right inside a family shelter. Three afternoons a week, kids in grades K–5 get to draw, move, and tell their own stories — and their caregivers get a few reliable hours to work on what comes next.
Our pilot runs at Jane Addams Place, a family shelter in North Philadelphia. First program period: July–December 2026.
In 2024, nearly a third of Philadelphians without housing were families with children. When a family lands in a shelter, the building is built for beds and paperwork — not for childhood. School lets out, and there's nowhere for a seven-year-old to be a seven-year-old.
HAVEN takes that gap seriously. We turn a few hours of the shelter's afternoon into a room that belongs to the kids: art on the tables, music on, room to run, and grown-ups who know their names. Nothing is graded. Nothing gets corrected. What a child makes is theirs.
And while their child is with us, a caregiver has something rare — time. Time for a housing appointment, a job interview, a phone call that can't happen with a five-year-old on their lap. Supporting the child and supporting the caregiver aren't two programs. They're the same one.
We started small on purpose, at one shelter, with one cohort — and we're documenting every step so other shelters can run this too.
“It takes a village to raise a child. When that support isn't around families, the stress becomes overwhelming. When organizations step in to surround these caregivers, it truly makes a difference.”
Before we designed a single session, we sat down with caregivers at Jane Addams Place and asked what would actually help. Here's what they said, in November 2025:
Sessions aren't a schedule of separate classes. Storytelling, movement, and art keep folding into each other — a story becomes a dance, a dance becomes a drawing.
We read out loud together — stopping to ask questions, argue with the characters, and wonder what happens next. Then the kids write and draw their own. By the end of the semester, every child has a book with their name on the cover.
Shelter life is short on room to run. So we make room — cooperative games, parachute days, tug-of-war, and choreography built with CityStep. It's how kids shake off a long day and learn to work with each other at the same time.
Open studio and guided art therapy sessions with the Kardon Center. Some feelings are easier to paint than to say out loud, and a kid who's had a hard week gets to put it somewhere. Materials are good ones, and there's no wrong way to use them.
We meet Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 3:30 to 5:45. The is the same every time — a lighter warm-up block, a short breather, then the main event. Kids who've had a lot of upheaval shouldn't have to guess what's coming next.
Loosen up with paint, clay, and paper. No prompt, no wrong answers.
Reading out loud together, then writing and drawing our own — building toward each child's book.
Room to run. Cooperative games, parachute, tag — whatever burns off the school day.
Guided sessions with a trained art therapist. Some feelings are easier to paint than to say.
A quiet table, a grown-up beside you, and someone to check it when you're done.
Rhythm games and choreography built together — learning to move as a group.
Every session starts with hellos and a snack — nobody learns anything hungry. Four adults are in the room the whole time: two program leads, two undergraduate mentors, and a paid high-school intern from the shelter itself. Our team stays after pickup to talk through how the day went.
Enrollment is free. Families move a lot; a child who leaves and comes back is still ours.
For the past four years we've spent after-school hours in Philadelphia's shelters — dancing, reading, and giving caregivers a brief moment of respite. HAVEN grew out of those afternoons.
Builds the volunteer and fundraising side of things, and wrote a picture book for children experiencing homelessness. Studying English and creative writing at Penn.
Designs and evaluates health programs in shelters, and teaches the movement side of HAVEN. Studying health and societies at Penn.
Designs arts-integrated curricula and has taught in classrooms and community settings across the city. Studying neuroscience and fine arts at Penn.
HAVEN was built with the families and staff of Jane Addams Place, and we work with the Kardon Center, CityStep, Tree House Books, and Mural Arts Philadelphia. Dr. Caroline Watts of Penn's Graduate School of Education advises the program, and Penn's Early Childhood and Family Research Center is helping us measure whether it works.
A program this size runs on people showing up. Any of these matter.
Sit on the floor and be a steady grown-up. We train you, and we ask for consistency over hours — the same face every week matters more than one big shift.
We're building HAVEN to be copied. If you run a shelter, a school, a clinic, or a family services program — or you teach art or movement — we'd like to talk.
In-kind gifts go straight into the room — crayons, paper, clay, books, snacks, yoga mats. We'll send you the current list before you buy anything.
Your gift buys crayons and picture books, pays the art therapists and mentors who sit with our kids, puts a stipend in a teenager's pocket, and gives a caregiver a few uninterrupted hours to work on getting home.
[HAVEN's 501(c)(3) status is in progress. Legal entity [name], EIN [00-0000000]. Donations will be tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.]
Whether you want to enroll a child, volunteer an afternoon, or just ask what this is — write to us. A real person reads every message.
We usually reply within a few days.
