Ashley Cross is a third-generation foster parent who has devoted her life to her community, providing free programs and services to Rochester youth and families through HOPE585, a relationship-centered community where marginalized youth and their families can hope, heal, and thrive. While living in Oklahoma, Cross started the first professional foster home for young ladies preparing to age out of foster care, living in the home herself and meeting her eldest daughter, Jordan, now twenty-nine years old.
When Cross moved to Rochester ten years ago, she knew she wanted to continue that work. She started a mutual aid Care Portal, uniting system providers like child welfare workers and school personnel with community members in order to communicate needs such as diapers or furniture. “Five hundred other people see the same email, and there’s no pressure to respond,” says Cross. “It’s just a beautiful way to keep the very tangible, specific needs in front of people and let them pick them up as they can.”
The next initiative for Cross was starting Bridge 2 Hope, a mentorship program for system-impacted youth, aged fifteen to twenty-one, focused on building hope, strengthening personal agency, and moving toward greater independence and stability.
“Most are living in isolation. Some don’t have permanency,” says Cross, “and we want to make sure that when they age out, they can at least name one to two adults that they can call if something happens.” Cross and her husband have been mentoring the same young man for the last three years, and she considers him part of her family now.
Kyara Wilson, the community engagement and volunteer coordinator for HOPE585, works to recruit, train, and support mentors and volunteers. “I love supporting the youth,” says Wilson. “We just did a summer camp, and we worked on résumé building. We took them dress shopping and, within two weeks, five of them got jobs.”
HOPE585 offers a youth counseling program that partners with the City of Rochester’s Person In Crisis (PIC) team, who contacts them when law enforcement is called for a mental health crisis but no crime has been committed.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cross and her husband, Melvin, became pastors of Glory House International Church, now Amplify Church, purchasing the building at 111 Chestnut Street. Cross remembers thinking, “I have this ecosystem of support and connection through technology. What if we use this building to create that within the brick and mortar?” The bright red doors around the side of the building mark the entrance to HOPE585, originally named “The Hub.”
Cross has steadily increased the advocacy work for young people and families impacted by child welfare services. “We felt that the work we do is impactful,” says Cross, “but it’s not changing the systems that create the conditions that bring children and families to our attention in the first place.”
There are still nearly 500 kids in the local foster care system, but there are around 7,000 families that undergo an investigation each year. HOPE585 offers reunification support such as case management and assistance. The biggest challenges for Cross are not being able to meet every need in the community and keeping families hopeful during setbacks to their progress.
“There’s a bigger crisis,” says Cross. “There are mothers and fathers who go through very intrusive investigations every year, mainly because they’re poor. We’ve been really instrumental in creating a community-wide conversation around alternatives surrounding how we respond to families and assess the difference between poverty and neglect.”
In 2023, Cross opened a community-supported foster home, referred to by county professionals as the Hope Home, for young women preparing to age out of the foster system. “I have twenty-one-year-olds in my life that, even coming from the best homes, are sometimes not ready,” says Cross. “So we want to be able to extend their resources and the time that they’re in that safety net by a few years.”
Cross was inspired by her eighty-five-year-old grandmother, Annie Willis, who took in many foster children over the years, eventually creating a nonprofit child placement agency in Colorado. “I know the work I do every day for HOPE is directly connected to what I was raised in and what I saw on a daily basis,” says Cross.
Two years ago, Cross introduced her Reimagine Initiative, gathering forty stakeholders from different sectors together for eight months to co-design solutions to narrow the front door to child protective services, working together to come up with pilots for schools.
Despite the rebranding, Cross’s organization is definitely still a hub. From church services and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings to a food pantry, there’s a lot going on in the building. Upstairs, there is a classroom and lounge area designed by the young people who utilize it, complete with binders full of in-progress goals, snacks, video games, clothing, and toiletries. Cross would also love to add a day care provider that could watch children while families receive services.
Program manager Zack Williford-Webb oversees the youth counseling program and school-based pilot. He says Cross encourages the staff to share ideas and execute their visions in the best interest of the families. He feels rewarded watching a young person’s eyes light up when they realize they can do whatever they set their mind to. “My favorite part of the job is when they realize they’re going from that position of crisis to taking control,” says Williford-Webb, “because then they feel empowered to deal with things in the future when we’re not necessarily around.”
Williford-Webb is referring to the science of cultivating and sustaining hope, which Cross embeds into all of her programs at HOPE585. The team uses the “Hope Theory” to measure and work toward increasing hope scores. Cross enjoys creating solutions and relationships, especially with the passionate, capable team at HOPE585 who have so much heart for young people and families.
When Cross is not working for Rochester families, she’s training for the HYROX fitness competition, cheered on by her three younger daughters, eight-year-old Harper, six-year-old Madison, and Riley, three.
Want to learn more? Visit hope585.org and get your free tickets for a Vision Tour, a unique opportunity to see the heart, mission, and vision that Cross has brought to our city. The staff shares stories that highlight the many ways that individuals, community organizations, businesses, or churches can volunteer, partner with, or support her mission and make a difference in the Rochester community.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2026 issue of (585).
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