youth leadership academy // culinary arts academy // changing the game // arts immersion

community building:
youth strategy consulting

The Youth Link team is a highly qualified cadre of consultants who have helped many communities develop successful youth strategies and programs. The group begins its process with a basic assessment of needs and readiness and then works together to create a unique design that builds upon existing strengths and available resources. We include partners such as community centers or a family-serving agency to ensure that support services can be sustained. Funding is often provided by a combination of public and private partners.

Community Building - Changing the Game

youth leadership academy // culinary arts academy // arts immersion // youth strategy consulting

Boston’s community of Youth Link partners hold an annual Changing The Game Basketball Tournament. The Changing The Game Tournament unites 100 teens and police as teammates in a day of round robin basketball with three youth and two police officers per team. The Tournament has been held three times and planning is underway for 2014. Adidas has been the tournament sponsor each year, providing Adidas sneakers and clothing to all players and supporting Youth Link services at Boston’s Franklin Field Housing Development.

The Changing The Game event has evolved into a full day of sports, community barbeque and a performance of Hoop Suite, a critically acclaimed Hip-Hop Opera, starring Boston youth including several teens from the Youth Link program. The event has built and sustained bonds between police, youth and families. The Youth Link team can help any community develop similar models for building their own positive youth culture.

youth link academy // culinary arts academy // changing the game // youth strategy consulting

Hoop Suite/Franklin Field Community Day for Arts Immersion

community building:
arts immersion

Youth Link has partnered with Boston's Anna Myer and Dancers to give young people a unique opportunity to tell their stories in workshops and performances with professionals, combining dance, poetry, spoken word, rap and classical music to tell the stories on stages and neighborhood basketball courts, and record them on film.

The result has been transformative for young people who have found themselves through genuine self-expression and the self-discipline. Community forms around layers of mentoring and weekly rehearsals. Youth Link can help any community build an arts immersion vehicle that creates shared purpose, empowers youth voices and inspires hope.

youth leadership academy // arts immersion // changing the game // youth strategy consulting

Culinary Arts Academy

community building:
culinary arts academy

The Culinary Arts program brings youth into the kitchen with the guidance of a trained vocational instructor each week for 12 weeks. During that time, they learn about and practice the preparation of a number of foods using varying cooking styles. Upon completion, youth can be supported to establish models such as a profit sharing catering venture made up of peers who have also completed the program. At a Boston location where 150 youth have participated in Youth Link's Culinary program, the young people cater dinners to events that occur both within their housing development and around the city. The training has offered a new sense of confidence, independence and creative expression for many participants. The sharing of food has also brought the community together with busy police officers stopping in to break bread with the teens and families from around the world sharing their traditional foods as a way of building relationships and overcoming language and cultural barriers.

Youth Link can train community partners to adapt the curriculum within their own communities in a way that harnesses the resources at hand.

culinary arts academy // arts immersion // changing the game // youth strategy consulting

community building:
youth leadership academy

Youth Link's Youth Leadership Academy (YLA) is a curriculum-based program that builds leadership skill and a shared positive culture among groups of youth. YLA can be used to unite and strengthen a single group of youth or it can be repeated with multiple groups as part of a larger youth strategy. Youth workers, teachers, police and parents can be co-trained along with youth in order to develop adult-youth partnerships and communities can develop their own YLA training teams with Youth Link consultation and support.

YLA is usually delivered through a series of twice-weekly sessions over four months. This format allows a meaningful culture of belonging and peer accountability to develop. Sessions evolve from being instructional to becoming a group support to youth as they learn to assume roles as peer leaders.

The short-term outcomes for participants are (1) to demonstrate an increased sense of respect for self and others; (2) and the ability to make better personal choices. The curriculum is adaptable but always flows from a consistent set of core values that include:

• Confidence
• Courage
• Commitment
• Community

All sessions are conducted as interactive forums with a high level of youth participation and diverse approaches to learning styles. The curriculum combines role-plays, structured skill development, experiential learning, individual presentations, and fun activities and games to keep students interested and to create a clear appreciation for progress as it is achieved.

what is YPI? // host a YPI team // build a YPI team

YPI: become a YPI organization

Sustaining YPI certification and facilitating ongoing YPI groups helps communities build sustainable trust between youth and police. It provides a context for using YPI as a tool to reduce crime, poverty and the risks that threaten child wellbeing. Youth Link offers an affordable coaching and consultation model where the community agency and Police Department participate in an ongoing effort to run YPIs and follow-up activities. Youth Link consultation includes review of outcomes, maintaining a strong team of trainers and monitoring strategic progress on issues that make communities safe places for kids to grow and succeed in school and life.

what is YPI? // host a YPI // become a YPI organization

YPI: build a YPI team

Youth Link offers and recommends a train-the-trainer approach to building a local capacity for facilitation of YPI. This allows a community to transform the issue of trust in the law among at-risk youth and their families while reducing delinquency and violence among teenagers in impoverished neighborhoods. The T-the-T process usually begins by certifying a cadre of six YPI trainers from among community–based partners and police officers. Each candidate receives a day of orientation, customized manuals, individual critiques, between four and six hours of individual coaching, group debriefing and final award ceremony. Four rounds of YPI are achieved, engaging over 100 youth and police in the model through the training process. The training process lasts for one-year and trainers can lead YPI groups independently with the off-site supervision of a NAFI Master Trainer.

what is YPI? // build a YPI team // become a YPI organization

YPI: host a YPI

The Youth Police Initiative (YPI) is a three-week training program that brings together up to fifteen youth with a similar number of police officers who patrol their neighborhoods. The two groups, often polarized, complete a leadership curriculum that reduces negative stereotypes by building positive identity and relationship ties. They then strengthen their relationships by completing activities together that help them to better their lives and their community. The YPI program highlights the potential to simultaneously achieve a positive benefit for youth participants and a paradigm changing societal benefit for law enforcement. The Youth Link team can facilitate a multi-session YPI in any community with a willing police department and community-based partner group. The model is meant to be part of a sustained effort but a single round of YPI can be a powerful catalyst for bringing people together around solutions and cooperation.

host a YPI // build a YPI team // become a YPI organization

YPI: what is YPI?

In 2000, there appeared to be a curious spike in youth violence – an incongruity within the reams of crime data amassed by the FBI. Unfortunately, it was not a spike, it was a new reality. Gun violence among children was occurring in schools and neighborhoods and festering into a sweeping national trend. Kids reported that they hated cops and distrusted the law. Police officers, in turn, were not talking to young people, claiming they did not know how. In most cities in America, the stalemate continued, as shootings and homicides rose among younger and younger teens.

In 2004, North American Family Institute stepped into the turbulence with the ambition of keeping the most vulnerable kids away from gangs, guns, violence, and death through the establishment of its unique Youth & Police Initiative. The focus was to address the dual challenge in these tough neighborhoods of teaching youth the skills to resolve daily conflicts with authority while also teaching police officers to step out of their cars and have genuine conversations.

The Youth & Police Initiative Program (YPI) brings at-risk youth together with the local beat officers to share personal stories, meals, and let their guards down long enough to have the difficult and honest discussions that are necessary in order for real change to take place. YPI began in Baltimore, then went to White Plains and Yonkers, New York, and into Boston’s challenging Franklin Field Public Housing Development, which had some of the worst homicide and violence statistics in the nation. The goal is simple: provide young people with critical life skills and foster a desire for a successful future; and the results are tangible. Youth Link’s efforts have resulted in reduced juvenile crime, increased educational attainments, and youth having increased aspirations.