Testimonials
“The program made me learn my lesson. I wasn’t trying to go up to the next level (Juvenile Justice). Since then, I haven’t been cited or gotten into real trouble. You guys helped me work on my grades too.”- 2020 Anonymous participant
“Thanks to YFS I was able to graduate high school. Part of my contract was to raise my grades and I had no idea that doing so, would help me with finishing community service but also to meet credit requirements at school. “B.Y- Program participant
“Before I started the program, I was doing a lot of bad stuff in 8th grade. I ended up pregnant while I was doing the program and I was having a hard time doing the hours while pregnant. You always checked in with me too. To make sure I was okay. I had my daughter after and worked on my hours and my sister would watch my daughter so I could finish them. Since then, I haven’t gotten into trouble at all, and I’m a senior and will be graduating this year. You (YFS) were flexible with me and supportive during my pregnancy and helped me successfully complete the program.” – 2020 R.M.
“It actually really did help me mentally and physically. It helped me with my grades and mentally it helped me focus on me more and stay out of the bad things I was doing. I liked the program because it helped the community as well and I found that interesting. They were all so nice and I loved cooking at the Teen Center for my community service. I also improved a few of my grades.” – 2020 C.M
Parents of our participants also had the following to say:
“I think this program definitely saved my kids from Juvie. I know they know this program helped them too. It’s been rough for sure! But thank god for this program.”- S Manzo
“We loved having that one-on-one connection with Bob. We loved the parent project class, I absolutely loved connecting with other parents and learning that we were not alone. That our kids were not bad kids, they were just things going on in our valley and that we needed to be educated as much as our kids needed to be educated. I felt that the individual assignments that were give to my son took into account what was going on with him, it was not a, ‘your kid messed up and there’s only one solution or recourse for them’. Bob gave him very specific assignments to accomplish and talked to him. He had that 1:1 personal connection to figure out what went wrong and what we can fix and how to get back on the right track. It wasn’t just here’s 50 hours of manual labor and we hope it works. It was more than that, it was things that made an impact on him.” – A Patri