a dream and a hope
National statistics show a disturbing picture for youths who age out of foster care. Four years after leaving care:
• Less than 50% graduated from high school
(vs. 85% for all 18-24 year olds)
• Less than 13% graduated from a four-year college
• 25% endured a period of homelessness
• Almost 65% did not maintain employment for a year
• Over 25% of young men spent time in jail
• 40% had become parents
YouthAbility is a nonprofit organization that PROVIDES job learning opportunities for at-risk youth.
YouthAbility is the dream and the hope of a small group of people who conceived and built the organization over the course of three short years. We are people who have recognized the need in our community through personal experience – foster moms, kinship moms, retirees raising grandchildren, and everyday moms and dads, and young parents to be.
Our Board and Executive Director have many years of guiding youth as well as navigating the societal and cultural problems they face. Among us are a Humboldt County Juvenile Justice Commissioner, the Humboldt Foster Parents Association President, Parent Trainers for Love and Logic, a high school Independent Studies Teacher/Administrator, and business, accounting and legal professionals.
Over the decades of our involvement in guiding youth as they enter adulthood, we grew frustrated watching as funds were not channelled into helping these at-risk youth in a productive way.
The YouthAbility solution
Seeing that every week, every month lost, can be a step down a wrong road for the teenagers and young adults we’ve worked with, we were galvanized into action. In just three years, we have built a model for work-based training for these difficult-to-teach youth and worked with close to 100 trainees between the ages of 11 and 23. We have hired some of those to work in our store, others have moved on to regular jobs or college.
Validating the importance of our work, some of our trainees come through Humboldt County Programs like Welfare to Work and Step Up. YouthAbility has contracts under the I.L.S. Program (Independent Living Skills) to offer qualified youth 150 hours of on-the-job training time. When appropriate, this can be extended through EDD. We have hired many trainees to work full time when they have completed their job education hours.
Additional job-training locations
Our goals are to give more jobs and extended chances to build employable skills to deserving youth. But we need more places for them. We are committed to growing our programs into the opening of other vocational schools serving this special youth population. These are teenagers and young adults who have not been able to conform to normal educational milieus.
An estimate* based on information from the census bureau is, that in 2007, 1,716 households in Humboldt County received public assistance dollars...close to 3%. We believe that 50-65% of these welfare recipients could be employable now if their formable job skills’ years had not been wasted.
Plans for growth in Humboldt County
To reach these emancipating youth before they experience the failures that lead to crime, drugs, living on the street and worse, there is only a window of a few years. The concept of the YouthAbility founders is to create a variety of vocational workplaces for youth that would attract them and challenge them to succeed. Auto mechanics, woodworking, sewing, crafts, small food preparation venues are all possible for on-the-job training. We envision a warehouse and training shops throughout Eureka, Arcata and even beyond.
Our founders’ vision is that integrating at-risk youth into the job market could result in a variety of benefits for our community. College credit for these courses would make it attractive to those youth who might go on to junior college. For those who obtain jobs in their chosen vocation, it could be a stepping stone to learning management skills for advancement, and perhaps even to owning their own businesses, thus creating more jobs in the community.
YouthAbility has plans for our community! Please help us.
YouthAbility, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. © 2008-2010 YouthAbility, Inc.
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Teenagers and young adults get excited about our programs - read these letters from our trainees.