CSC: Youth Programs / Education Opportunities: YouthBuild: YouthBuild Information

YouthBuild Information

YouthBuild is a comprehensive youth and community development program.

YouthBuild simultaneously addresses several core issues facing low-income communities: education, housing, jobs, and leadership development. It uniquely addresses the status of unemployed young men and women, who have dropped out of school and have no apparent path to a productive future. It allows them to simultaneously serve their communities and build their own futures.

The YouthBuild program has been carefully designed by community activists with the input of young people in several neighborhoods over 16 years. Young people of many racial and ethnic groups have participated and benefited. It is appealing to groups in rural as well as urban neighborhoods.

Because a comprehensive approach is called for, the YouthBuild program has gradually and inevitably become a number of things at once:

It is a community service program, in which young people get to build housing for homeless and other low income people, providing the most valuable and visible commodity for their hard-pressed communities: affordable housing.

It is an alternative school, in which young people attend a YouthBuild school full time on alternate weeks, studying for their high school equivalency diplomas and for college entrance using a curriculum specially geared for their interests.

It is a job training and pre-apprenticeship program, in which young people get close supervision and training in construction skills full time on alternate weeks, from qualified instructors who are usually union journeyman, and then get placed in construction related jobs or apprenticeships.

It is a leadership development program, in which young people share in the governance of their own program through an elected policy committee and participate actively in community affairs through other committees, learning the values and the life-long commitment needed by effective and ethical community leaders.

It is a youth development program, in which young people participate in personal counseling, peer support groups, and life planning processes which assist them in healing from past hurts, overcoming negative habits and attitudes, and pursuing achievable goals which will establish a productive life, sustaining themselves and their immediate families.

It is a long-term mini-community, in which young people make new friends committed to a positive lifestyle, pursue cultural and recreational activities together, and can continue to participate for years through a Graduates’ Program and a National YouthBuild Leaders’ Network.

It is a community development program, in which community based organizations obtain the resources to tackle several key community issues at once, strengthening their capacity to build and manage housing for their residents, educate and inspire their youth, create leadership for the future, and generally take responsibility for their neighborhoods.

It is not accurate to define YouthBuild as any of its particular parts. It must be understood as a comprehensive whole. It fits in many places, and overlaps with everything else related to tackling poverty and engaging low-income young people as productive members and potential leaders of a democratic society.

"Because a comprehensive approach is called for, the program gradually and inevitably become a number of things at once…It is not accurate to define YouthBuild as any of its particular parts. It must be understood as a comprehensive whole." 

Dorothy Stoneman, President. February, 1993

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