Long before the needs facing impoverished children in our inner cities was a popular cause with anyone in the public, private or nonprofit sectors, ASLAN Youth Ministries was established in Monmouth County in 1975 for the specific purpose of providing life-transforming services for disadvantaged children. In the early days of Aslan it took a great deal of perseverance to merely survive, and funding sources were almost nonexistent. Problems facing disadvantaged children were not something most individuals wanted to think about. The poor were blamed for creating their own problems. The poor were left to solve their own problems. ASLAN Youth Ministries would not accept this. In the words of British Parliamentarian Edmond Burke, "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Aslan refused to stand by and do nothing.

Twenty-six years (and hundreds of success stories later), ASLAN Youth Ministries continues to positively and permanently impact the needs of urban children at risk. Aslan brings these years of experience and our highly successful model programs to the table. Above all, ASLAN is not latchkey in nature. We do not provide services merely to "keep kids off the streets." If children are not properly educated, do not have the opportunity to learn acceptable norms of behavior and never learn what to value in life (in particular their own lives and The lives of others), then keeping them off the streets is of little or no consequence.

ASLAN’S flagship program serves Red Bank, New Jersey’s West Side and an adjoining community in the northern end of Tinton Falls. In 1990, we expanded our outreach into the public housing projects of Long Branch, New Jersey. We established a satellite program in Asbury Park in the summer of 1999. ASLAN has also established a part-time outreach in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, W.I. Our current goals are firmly establish the fledgling outreach program in Asbury Park and to continue expansion of our services in the troubled housing projects of Long Branch. The end result will be changed lives: children who learn there is strength in "turning the other cheek" rather than taking a gun to school and killing teachers and classmates . . . children who will not allow "I can’t!" to be a part of their vocabularies . . . children who refuse to perpetuate the cycle of failure that has plagued their families for generations!

THE NAME, ASLAN, IS TAKEN FROM THE EVER POPULAR BOOK SERIES, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, BY BRITISH AUTHOR, C.S. LEWIS. ASLAN IS THE PERSIAN WORD FOR "LION."

Changing the world one child at a time