Ministers put focus on youth, youth workers

Yawu Miller

A coalition of ministers has joined forces with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay to form an initiative aimed at coordinating services to teenagers to help prevent crime, drug-abuse, gangs and teen pregnancy.

At a March 1 press conference, members of the Black Ministerial Alliance, the Ten Point Coalition, the Emmanuel Gospel Center and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay held a press conference announcing their High Risk Youth Network, a coalition of religious organizations, social service providers and public agencies that have focused on youth services.

The group released a report outlining what the ministers say are the critical needs of Boston youths.

“We now have scientific, evidence-based data of the realities of life for young people in Boston,” said Black Ministerial Alliance Executive Director Harold Sparrow. “From here, the real work of improving their futures, and the future of this city, can begin.”

The ministerial organizations have been working with the United Way since November 2004 on the High Risk Youth Network, convening representatives of religious organizations, community-based organizations and law enforcement and other public agencies to identify gaps in youth services, set goals for youth development services and strengthen the system for providing youth employment.

“We’ve reached out to as many groups as we could think of and we’ve had a tremendous response,” Sparrow said.

Sparrow says more than 80 religious organizations and community groups have participated in the network’s convenings, as have the Department of Youth Services and the Department of Social Services.

Since President George Bush began promoting his “faith-based” approach to social services, the Black Ministerial Alliance and Ten Point Coalition have played an increasingly prominent role funding youth initiatives. Sparrow says the BMA has received $6 million in federal funding and made $4.5 million in grants.

Last year, however, the group lost a key federal grant for its re-entry program, an initiative aimed at providing services for criminal offenders returning to the community after incarceration.

The U.S. Department of Labor awarded the grant to the nonprofit Span Inc. after the BMA reported on only 137 of the 600 offenders it said had participated in the program, according to a Boston Globe report.

Youth workers are questioning the BMA’s — and the Bush administration’s — focus on providing grants to religious organizations for youth organizing.

“Anyone involved in coordinating services for high risk youth with city agencies and nonprofits should have a strong track record in managing successful programs with minimal resources, as many of the groups like the Hyde Square Task Force have done for the last 15 years,” said Claudio Martinez, executive director of the Task Force.

In October of 2004, a month before the formation of the High Risk Youth Network, youth workers from established youth programs around the city began meeting to form the United Youth and Youth Workers of Greater Boston. Like the High Risk Youth Network, the Youth Workers were aiming to better coordinate their work to prevent duplication of effort.

“Each of us has different areas of expertise,” said Marlena Rose, who directs the Roxbury Environmental Education Project and helped form the alliance.

Last month, the alliance — which has 75 members — helped coordinate testimony at a City Council hearing on youth services during which teens from organizations in the city advocated for more job opportunities and more funding for schools and after school programs.

While the BMA has received millions of dollars in federal funds, many of the more established youth organizations operating in and around Boston have lost substantial funding. In 2002, when the state withdrew funding for tobacco cessation and teen pregnancy prevention programs, youth workers estimate that the state lost more than 1,000 teen organizing jobs.

“It was a huge resource that disappeared,” said Stanley Pollack, executive director of Teen Empowerment.

Funding for programs targeting children up to age 12 has historically been fairly stable, but funding for teenage programs has been subject to sudden cuts, advocates say.

“It’s grant-driven,” said Sandy Martin, who heads the South End, Lower Roxbury Youth Workers Alliance. “You often have one- or two-year programs. There’s an incredible lack of continuity.”

The 2002 funding cuts shut down teen organizing programs run out of community health centers and other community-based organizations, leaving many teenagers out of work. Pollack and other veteran youth workers see youth leadership as key to preventing youth violence.

“Violence has to be resolved at the teenage level,” he said.

Since the budget cuts began in 2002, teen violence has been making its resurgence in low-income communities of color. There were 75 homicides in Boston last year, many of them committed by teenagers.

The mayor and Police Department have responded to the surge in violent crimes with several initiatives, including increased police presence in high crime areas and, according to many youth workers, increased targeting of youth for unconstitutional searches.

The resurgence youth crime has driven much of the discussion on youth services, but some activists caution that the focus on crime has policy-makers focused on a deficit-oriented strategy for providing services to youths.

The focus on crime can steer the scant resources that exist for youth programming — mostly from private foundations — away from groups that provide services to law-abiding teenagers.

Mariama White Hammond, executive director of Project Hip-Hop, a youth-led organization that serves 50 to 75 teens on a regular bases and focuses on social justice issues, said her funding requests from the BMA have been rejected for three years in a row.

Meanwhile, lesser-known religious organizations, including churches and church-based groups, have received BMA grants of up to $50,000.

Martinez, whose organization works with youths in the Hyde Square and Jackson Square sections of Jamaica Plain, remains skeptical.

“I’m not familiar with the BMA’s proposed initiative but any urgent-program-of-the-month-type of intervention and initiatives are usually short lived and have very little positive effects on high-risk youth,” Martinez said. “Consistent, long term commitment from community based organizations that work day in and day out with these youth is where foundations and government should be spending their resources.”