ABOUT

Under the management of The Youth Development and Research Fund (YDRF), youth service professionals and advocates are coming together in different cities to advocate for supportive public policies and increased popular support for vulnerable youth, ages 16-24, who are unemployed, out-of-school, in foster care, and in the juvenile/criminal justice system and to organize those constituents to advocate for themselves. We call ourselves Fair Chance for Youth.

Our goal is raise awareness of a population that has been long undervalued and overlooked. We want to make "leave no child behind" a reality. We aim to build the public will to make these opportunities available. 

We are not supported by any government or foundation funding. Usually, support of this nature comes with many strings attached. Nor, do we represent any organization or group. Although many of us are employed by youth serving organizations, our organization is not our mission. Our mission is the upliftment of vulnerable youth - whenever, wherever, and however. Policy prescriptions often conflict with the best interest of youth. Organizations follow policy prescriptions, we follow the best interest of our youth. Fair Chance for Youth is supported by the people for the people. We are not looking for any donations or funding. If you are interested in supporting the work, click here.

Problem and Opportunity

All of the federally-funded education, employment, and national service programs combined are barely scratching the surface of the need and the demand. There are less than 300,000 full-time training and educational opportunities for 2.4 million 16 to 24-year-olds who desperately need options beyond the streets.  

While the country has no problem finding resources for war, there is no commitment to fight the war of unemployment and education that runs rampant in the inner cities and rural areas of the United States. 

We understand that getting out-of-school youth on the political and public agenda is going to be a major challenge. The general public view is that this group of young people are unworthy of major investment because they are perceived to have opted out, and that nothing works for them. The general political view is that they do not vote and do not have strong allies among voters, and are therefore of marginal interest. 

Intrinsically, most of us realize that the potential cost savings to society of intervention in the lives of one out-of-school young person outweighs the expenditure.  The ultimate cost to society from violence, crime, injuries and deaths is inestimable.  Saving one of these young adults from any one of the aforementioned tragedies is clearly worth the investment.  Yet, for some reason, we have been unable to gather the tools necessary to measure these benefits, organize this information for public scrutiny, and, then, access the media to gather popular political will.  If we can’t do it, maybe our young people can.

It doesn’t require a Harvard degree to measure the cost savings of preventing just one young adult from taking a life, going to jail, engaging in felony activity, preventing an untimely pregnancy - take your choice - then multiply it by hundreds of thousands of dollars, tears, and fears.  Somewhere in there, you can determine cost savings.  And let us not fool ourselves; simply eliminating programs does nothing to address the issue.  In fact, it will only make matters worse.  If we cut programs, our anticipated cost savings will actually result in increased expenditures. History has taught us that. How do you spell FRANCE?

Our Goal

Using the Internet and our connections with more than 500 youth programs across the U.S., we will launch a platform for youth service professionals to speak about political and policy issues that affect them and the young people they serve. We will promote monthly involvement in educational awareness activities among youth service professional outside the scope of their organiation. We will highlight these activities as a method of education and a means to spark the involvement of other organizations in allowing youth to be their own voice for social change. 

We'll also challenge youth-popular culture to present another image of youth as something more than gangsters, pimps and hoes. We will also work with other groups—online efforts and other organizations that are doing related work—to extend the reach of our efforts. 

Leadership

Frustrated by the lack of advocacy efforts for out-of-school youth, several professionals in the workforce preparation and educational fields decided to take direct action to engage youth in efforts to highlight the issues and challenges faced by out of school youth in the United States.