Belonging Framework
Last updated 7/17/2026
Our Belonging framework identifies seven core domains that were developed out of our Fortifying Futures (FF) project. FF concluded that experiencing a majority of them is necessary to foster true wellbeing in youth and young adults. Our framework informs how we build all our programs and projects at AHSHAY.
- Basic needs: Efforts that help address unexpected costs, food, and transportation, help reduce external stresses and demonstrate to youth that they are valued.
- Wellbeing: Accessible, culturally-affirming, infrastructure and care guidance that promotes wellbeing, helps people traverse many experiences and allows them to better know themselves.
- Building Skills: Community-based education and skill-sharing relationships that help young people discover, develop and celebrate their talents, interests, and inherent brilliance. Showing youth the community’s investment in them.
- Intergenerational Connection: Regular interactions and learning across generations that build a sense of care with certainty. Asserting that “all youth are our youth” and helps youth and adults feel accountable to one another.
- Space: Third spaces – both virtual and physical – that are co-developed with intentional location selection, thoughtful design, and affirming resources and messaging where youth feel fully understood and celebrated.
- Safeness: More than just the absence of threats, it is the relationships and environments that allow youth to attend to their growth, take risks and know that the community cares about them.
- Promoting Identity: The intentional celebration of youth’s identity, journeys, voice and culture in community helps them feel seen and appreciated.
