The work of Bravehearts M.O.V.E New York as a youth-led organization will be guided and informed by our beliefs and commitments to:

  • Young adults have the right to be empowered, educated, and given a decision-making role in their own lives. Young adults also have the right to be empowered to help shape the policies and practices that govern care for all systemically impacted youth. This includes giving young people a sustainable voice, being authentically listened to and maintaining a focus of creating a safe and responsive environment. This will enable a young person to gain agency over one’s self, negotiate critical decision-making skills and ultimately feel secure within themselves and their community.

  • We honor the voices of our community, value diversity, embrace individuality, and are committed to ensuring equitable opportunities for the youth that we support. We will use our voices and experiences to develop programming that addresses historical issues that impact our communities such as racism, racial disparities, implicit bias and structural power injustices. Thus creating supports that are individualized, relatable, responsive and healing-centered.

  • We recognize the contributions and commitments of agencies and providers within the communities that foster the futures of young adults. We believe that not just legal, but relational permanency options and supportive discharge planning which promotes wellness, be made available for all young adults transitioning from the Child Welfare system.

  • We are committed to reimagining systemic power structures to improve the working relationships between youth and adults. By incorporating intentional methodologies of trust and transparency we foster a culture of teamwork, collaboration and partnerships with professional allies and stakeholders.

  • We embody an organizational, programmatic, supervisory and engagement framework that promotes hope, interdependence, creativity, empathy and understanding when responding to the various types of traumas and how it impacts the overall emotional wellbeing of young professionals. Our organizational culture promotes safe spaces for peer learning through supportive supervision practices and healing-based professional development.

The staff members of Bravehearts foster the values-led organizational culture through their individualized experiential expertise and the embodiment of the following personal values:

  •  A network of people, places and/or interests that allow you to feel secure, supported and validated in a personal need or goal. A sense of belonging, satisfaction and/or personal achievement.

  •  When we manifest a feeling, thought or action that invests towards the advancement of the wellbeing of a person, place or thing. Love is selfless, safe, consistent, responsive and transparent. Love is REAL and is a prerequisite for healing to occur. 

  • The care and concern we express when we feel for and with the struggle or suffering of another. We extend grace and hold space for the experiences of others, while we continue along our own journey of healing.

  • Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than just professing them.