Partners ensuring that individuals and families are sustainably lifted from the cycle of poverty, while bolstering the workforce via job training, professional development, and support for youth on non-college career tracks.
Children's Services of Roxbury (CSR) is one of the largest minority-operated nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts, serving more than 6,000 children and families annually. CSR's mission is to bring peace of mind to children and families across Massachusetts. When a family is at peace, children are healthier and communities are stronger.
Over 50 years, CSR has grown to meet the needs of diverse populations across the state of Massachusetts by offering children and families an array of programs and services designed to maintain continuity. CSR offers emergency, transitional, and permanent housing and stabilization services for homeless families; supports for children and families struggling with domestic violence and substance abuse including family stabilization, comprehensive foster care and adoption services, and parent mentoring; affordable childcare for Boston's most vulnerable families, including homeless, abused, and neglected children, and children of teen parents; children's mental health services, including an extensive partnership in 15 Boston Public Schools; youth development programs, including hip-hop therapy and their Youth & Police in Partnership program.
Jeremiah Program (JP)’s mission is to disrupt the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children, two generations at a time. JP believes the impacts of generational poverty and structural racism can be disrupted through a two-generation (2Gen) approach that invests simultaneously in a mother’s vision for her future (her post-secondary, career, and leadership goals) and the education of her children.
By providing holistic support for majority-BIPOC single mother college students, JP seeks to intentionally move resources and shift power and leadership to communities that have historically been sidelined from equal opportunity. JP deeply believes that all moms, especially single moms experiencing poverty, are the best experts of their lives and the best architects of their own solutions. JP moms are leaders, learners, and future professionals – JP is committed to supporting them as they author the next chapter for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Just A Start's (JAS) mission is to promote equity by creating access to stable housing and building pathways to economic opportunity.
Just A Start's programs include affordable housing, education and job training, and comprehensive support services, spanning Cambridge and beyond. JAS has developed and currently maintain 600 affordable apartments, and offers financial and technical support to help local families to stabilize their housing. JAS also prepare individuals of all ages and circumstances with the skills and knowledge they need for fulfilling careers, leveraging their talent to achieve economic mobility and strengthen the region's workforce.
New England Culinary Arts Training (NECAT) offers training, support and employment services to prepare adults to secure and retain career-ladder jobs in the Boston area’s diverse and wide-ranging food services industry.
Since 2013, NECAT’s Culinary Arts Job Training Program has enrolled over 1,060 adults who were experiencing significant barriers to stable employment, including prior incarceration, lack of training, substance use recovery and homelessness. NECAT's 12-week, trauma-informed program provides students with daily culinary arts training; case management focused on connecting students with wrap-around services and delivering social-emotional support; and career services, including resume, cover letter, and interview assistance and job placement strategies. All of these services are offered free of charge to students.
The Food Project's mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a more just and sustainable food system. The Food Project envisions a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, local, healthy, affordable food.
Each year, The Food Project employs 120 youth to help grow over 200,000 pounds of fresh produce on over 70 acres of sustainability-managed urban and suburban farms. Working alongside adults in their communities, this fresh produce is distributed to food-insecure families through hunger-relief organizations and innovative, community-driven food access programs.
Young Man with a Plan (YMWAP), launched in 2015, creates a new culture of brotherhood, respect, aspiration and achievement for 175 at-risk Black and Latino male teens and young adults in Boston. YMWAP achieves this through research-informed strategies of: connecting youth to caring adults; strengthening youth academic, social emotional, critical thinking, and financial literacy skills; engaging students in individualized success planning for college and/or career; and, creating a protective community. Through four years of mentoring and success planning, they help young men build the fortitude and imagination to overcome significant obstacles and to plan for and access sustainable futures. As one of their young men explains, "I learned the value of having a higher standard instilled in me."
“We help each other when someone is failing and are always supporting each other.”