Charity Finds Success in Work With At-Risk Children, but It's Costly

Under the Obama administration, the Promise Neighborhoods initiative was launched. It granted over $430 million in multiyear grants to nonprofits across 17 cities. The success of these grants have been difficult to measure. Two of the programs that were awarded grants highlight the differences in communities, and how success can’t be measured one way, but across a spectrum. “These first five years are like finding yourself,” said Lepore. “It’s an opportunity to find out what’s working, what isn’t and what we need to invest in.”

Cleveland has struggled through the years to reduce youth violence. But important lessons have been learned, here and elsewhere. City officials say they are factoring those lessons into their latest plans to reduce violence among young men in the city.

Project PRESS, which stands for Preparing Responsive and Effective School Social Workers, addresses the social worker shortage in schools by motivating social work students to pursue careers as school social workers providing them with the proper training to do so. It’s a year-long program that focuses on staffing historically Black and low-income areas, and has placed 22 social workers in schools in its first year.

A Minnesota high school's "Grow-Your-Own" program gives students of color the opportunity to earn college credit, learn culturally-relevant history, and explore careers in education while still working toward their high school diplomas. The students create their own lesson plans within an ethnic studies framework and volunteer at elementary schools mentoring younger kids.

Street Priests Incorporated engages with youth living on the streets in Nigeria to offer them scholarship funding, food aid, reunification with their families, and more. The organization has helped more than 17,000 children through its programs since 2014.

A peer tutoring program at a New Jersey high school has helped students improve academic success while feeling connected and supported by their peers. The program started by providing time during study hall periods for small groups of peers to meet. Then, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the program went virtual with pairs of students meeting twice a week in zoom breakout rooms. About 54% of students who were tutored passed a class they had previously failed. The program also fosters social connections and a supportive school culture.

There is much to be learned from The Chicago Police Department's failure to regulate moonlighting police officers. Boasting the nation's weakest oversight of documenting its officer's second-shift jobs, the department has seen repercussions both in shooting statistics and tax payer dollars. It's not what Chicago is doing that is a solution, but what others are doing that they should learn from.

Misinformation and misunderstanding about the law can lead youth to have accelerating confrontations with the police. Cleveland’s Patrick Henry School offers Juvenile Justice Jeopardy, a game that orients middle school kids to the facts about criminal justice. The game enables youth to internalize the information through an enjoyable format.

Should police be law enforcers or social responders? Some leaders say "guardian" duty is at least important as purely law enforcement tasks, sometimes known as "warrior" work. That idea is rooted in centuries-old principles of policing.

Educate!, a social enterprise started in Uganda, helps students start businesses while they are still in school - students are "creating jobs instead of looking for them." The organization trains teachers and youth mentors, who then work with the students in their schools to get businesses off the ground. A randomized trial conducted in 2014 found that graduates of the program earned double the income of their peers.