Massachusetts

Boston

Boston Urban Youth Foundation
Boston Urban Youth Foundation’s mission is to help at-risk youth develop spiritually, emotionally, academically, and economically.

Boston Urban Youth Foundation serves over 500 youth ages 11-18 from the Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods of Boston. BUYF uniquely combines case management, incarnational mentoring, academic skill-building, vision casting, and positive peer group experiences to build positive futures, one kid at a time. BUYF motivates, mobilizes and equips at-risk youth toward college and a positive future. BUYF partners with parents, schools, courts, and police. BUYF’s in-school and after-school integrated approach involves caring adults in the lives of young people. So that they can fulfill their God-given potential.

BYO: Boston Area Youth Organizing Project
We are an organization of youth, led by youth and supported by adults, who are united by a common purpose: to increase youth power and create positive social change. To do this, we develop counter-cultural values, build relationships across differences, train and develop leaders, identify key issues of concern and take action for justice. Our goals are to improve the lives of young people, increase real political participation and build community.

City Stage Co. of Boston
City Stage Co. offers urban children, youth and families opportunities to participate in the performing arts, so they can make discoveries about themselves and the world.

We do this through performing, educating and collaborating.

MYTOWN
MYTOWN’s (Multicultural Youth Tours of What’s Now) mission is to use the power of community and cultural history to inspire youth to be leaders for social change.

Since 1995, MYTOWN has trained and employed over 300 low and moderate-income Boston teens in our youth development program where they have learned about the history of their families, neighborhoods, and city and developed skills to create and lead historical walking tours and presentations for nearly 14,000 Boston residents and visitors.  MYTOWN believes that young people and communities can realize the power local history has in increasing youth activism and decreasing the stereotypes that stigmatize urban neighborhoods.

Project Hip-Hop
When Project HIP-HOP (Highways Into the Past – History, Organizing, and Power) began in 1993 activists Nancy Murray, Pam Ellis, and Bill Batson were tired of going to rallies and other social justice events and seeing children of the 60′s and almost no people under the age of 30. All of them had been doing anti-racism work in some capacity and felt that the heavy emphasis on diversity and interpersonal racism often failed to the raise issues institutional racism. Recognizing that many American young people born in the 80′s and 90′s were not taught about institutional racism and had very little context for social justice movements, Project HIP-HOP’s founders decided to connect Greater Boston area young people with the living history of the Civil Rights Movement in order to inspire them to fight racism by building their own movements.

Teen Empowerment
The mission of the Center for Teen Empowerment is to empower youth and adults as agents of individual, institutional, and social change.

Teen Empowerment (TE) inspires young people, and the adults who work with them, to think deeply about the most difficult social problems in their communities, and gives them the tools they need to work with others in creating significant positive change. At TE’s youth organizing sites, youth and adult staffbring authentic youth voice into the dialogue about improving their communities, mobilize the energy of urban youth to create meaningful change, and facilitate mutually respectful relationships between youth and adults. The Teen Empowerment Model is responsible for our success. TE’s interactive methodology is effective with groups of all ages, and TE staff train others to use the model and have written a book, Moving Beyond Icebreakers©, describing our creative approach to group facilitation.

Tenacity
Founded in 1999, Tenacity has served over 20,000 Boston students who otherwise would lack a safe, productive, and healthy after-school and summer environment. Our high-quality literacy and tennis programming not only build academic skills and improve fitness, they also foster the development of strong bonds between our students and caring staff, which instills the resilience needed to succeed in school and life.

YouthBuild Boston
Youth Build Boston (YBB) is a nonprofit organization based in Roxbury, Massachusetts that serves young adults of Boston. Established in 1990, Youth Build Boston provides opportunities for students to build career and life skills via hands-on, innovative programs such as construction training and sustainable landscape design. YBB has completed 80 units of housing and more than 800 students have graduated.

Zumix
Zumix is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) cultural organization dedicated to building community through music and the arts. Located in East Boston, MA, ZUMIX provides top-quality cultural programming as an alternative way for young people to deal with frustration, anger and fear, and as a method of building cultural understanding and acceptance in one of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods.