Our Mission and History

The Lower East Side Family Union (LESFU), a community-based organization, preserves, strengthens and empowers families by delivering culturally-sensitive, multi-lingual services.

To implement our Mission, we:

• Address the needs of families in New York City neighborhoods.
• Deliver programs and services to our clients in their primary language and in ways that reflect their culture.
• Advocate on behalf of the families we serve to ensure that they have appropriate access to available resources.
• Establish partnerships with government agencies, corporations, foundations and other community-based organizations in order to fully implement our mission.

We were founded in 1974 to stabilize families and reduce the high percentage of Lower East Side children that were being sent into foster care. In collaboration with the Columbia School of Social Work and local Settlement Houses, LESFU pioneered the “integration of services” model of casework practice to prevent children from entering the foster care system unnecessarily. This model has now been successfully replicated locally and nationally.

For more information on our programs and how we help the families we serve, click here. Please contact our Manhattan office if you’d like to speak with a member of our executive staff.

Who We Serve

The neighborhoods LESFU currently serves in Manhattan include the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Murray Hill and Battery Park. In Queens, the neighborhoods we serve include Elmhurst, Forest Hills, Flushing, Corona, Rego Park, Jackson Heights. These vibrant, ethnically diverse neighborhoods are home to many recent immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. The families we serve are a reflection of these communities.

The challenges and stress of urban life in a new country and community are difficult and many experience a sense of cultural and linguistic isolation. The families we serve are often struggling to stay together in the face of financial, emotional and physical obstacles. Many find it difficult to navigate ‘the system’ in order to access the help they need.

The staff of the Lower East Side Family Union is largely composed of members of the communities we serve. Many of us come from families that have similar cultural backgrounds. We speak English, Spanish, and several Chinese dialects.

We are proud that LESFU has succeeded in enhancing family life in the communities we serve and has helped transform the approach to families in crisis utilizing our visionary model for family preservation. As we observe our 30th Anniversary, we are rededicating ourselves to the original goals of the organization, while at the same time, adapting our services to meet the needs of recent immigrant groups arriving in New York City.