Grants fuel nonprofit tasked with helping families

For nearly three decades, the nonprofit Alaska Youth and Family Network has been helping families live strong, healthy, safe, and productive lives. The nonprofit organization has grown with demand in the community. From its humble roots in 1997 as a collective of parents who recognized the importance of better advocacy for families, the group incorporated in 2001. AYFN opened its first permanent office in Anchorage in 2007, creating a stable base for statewide family support that emphasizes assisting families in learning about diagnoses, medications, state policies, child welfare and juvenile justice requirements, and healthy child development.

Seven years later, with the help of a grant from the Mat-Su Health Foundation, a Wasilla office was added. Paul Cornils, AYFN’s executive director, said expanding to the Mat-Su was a significant milestone in the organization’s growth.

“It dramatically increase our visibility, access, and ability to partner with local providers,” he said.

By 2024, AYFN was honored as the state’s Alaska Peer Support Agency of the year. But with population expansion came increased demand for services and the extra expense required to supply them. Another grant last year from the Mat-Su Health Foundation is helping to cover those expenses this year.

Cornils said the funding strengthens AYFN’s commitment to offering living-wage employment and robust training for its staff. It also assists in AYFN’s transition to being a Medicaid-licensed organization.

“Medicaid licensing is a critical step toward long-term sustainability,” he said. “Licensing requires substantial administrative time and resources, and the grant allows us to maintain uninterrupted service delivery throughout the process.”

Originally created as the Valley Hospital in 1948, the nonprofit Mat-Su Health Foundation has been making investments in community health and wellness since 2007, when it became part owner of the new Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. Since that time, while working to ensure the hospital continues to meet the needs of a diverse and growing population, the Foundation has invested more than $160 million of its share of hospital profits in the community through scholarships, sponsorships, and grants to other nonprofit organizations around the Valley.

Cornils said the Health Foundation has been transformative for families and service organizations throughout the Valley, including through its program R.O.C.K. Mat-Su. Short for “Raising Our Children with Kindness,” R.O.C.K. Mat-Su is a cross-sector collaborative launched more than a decade ago.

AYFN has been actively involved in the organization for many years, Cornils said, helping to shape initiatives by contributing professional experience and family-centered insight.

“These efforts have measurable, life-changing impacts on families in the Mat-Su,” he said. “Families are better able to stay together, heal together, and thrive within a community that works in concert rather than in silos.”

Cornils said the power of collaboration that the Health Foundation facilitates is important to the Mat-Su.

“There is so much happening in our communities – both challenges and opportunities – that profoundly affect children and families,” he said. “Addressing those needs requires coordinated, compassionate effort. AYFN is proud to be part of that collective work here in the Mat-Su.”

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