Youth, Incorporated-An Alternative
For 40 years, Youth, Incorporated, a 501©(3) organization, has been quietly shining a bright light on the right path for Cincinnati’s at-risk youth. Six-hundred teenagers a year, who – for any number of reasons – are in foster homes or in the Juvenile Court System, are given a chance to have a stable environment where trained staff listen and model the importance of education, boundaries, morals and respect.
Although some parents have tried their best, many teenagers may not survive the drug-ridden neighborhoods or the over-exposure of negative role models. Those of us who had nurturing parents creating a smooth passageway to navigate in our youth may have trouble imagining what it’s like to be raised in a home where no one monitored what you ate - or noticed if you ate - much less if you came home at night. We may ask ourselves if we might have ended up in foster homes or the juvenile justice system, wondering how we got there. And we might have wished for someone to step in to help.