Youth Link Youth Leadership Project

Issue: Natural and Societal Disaster Preparedness

Grant Amount: $75,016.70
Peabody, MA
Year Funded: 2011
Organization: North American Family Institute Inc. (NAFI)

The Youth Link Youth Leadership Project 2.0 (YLYLP) will provide up to 80 youth
living in two of Boston’s most underserved housing developments with an
opportunity to gain useful, vocational life-skills, training and potential
employment through participation in a 12 week vocational catering
program. The program is an extension and expansion of an existing Youth Leadership
Project already taking place in Boston’s Franklin Field neighborhood and builds off of an
established curriculum based on best-practices. The program will also give
youth an opportunity to take part in a profit-sharing catering venture
that will teach valuable, healthy, pro-social skills as an alternative to
violence and gang-involvement.

A huge issue for youth living in these neighborhoods is the overwhelming amount of violence they experience in their young lives. As gang-populated neighborhoods, the lure of negative and violent behavior exists almost from birth. As a public housing development, most residents are low-income families who don’t have many existing resources or support systems. Children are often uninvolved in school or community sports, leading to inactivity. They are also often making their own meals, built largely off of fast-food and processed snacks.

The YLYLP 2.0 is designed to combat these issues by getting kids off the streets and into the kitchen where they learn to take part in pro-social, structured after-school activities, take pride in their accomplishments, cook and serve nutritious meals and create an opportunity to eat a weekly dinner as a family. The program teaches valuable skills in a safe, nurturing environment.

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