Opportunity Youth United is a national movement of young leaders who have decided to join forces to increase opportunity and decrease poverty in America.
Somerville, MA
02144
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We are a national movement of young leaders, united to increase opportunity and decrease poverty in America. Our National Council of Young Leaders was formed in July 2012 in response to a recommendation of the White House Council on Community Solutions, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Foundations. It is now funded by the Skoll Foundation. The council is sponsored by Jobs for the Future, National College Advising Corps, Public Allies, The Corps Network, Year Up, Youth Leadership Institute, and YouthBuild USA. It is staffed by YouthBuild USA and supported by the Llano Grande Center, the National Congress of American Indians, and the National Rural Assembly. We were nominated and selected by these organizations as outstanding young leaders representing diverse geographical communities and cultural groups. Each of us has overcome enormously challenging conditions to become dedicated leaders and servants of our communities and our peers. We were offered wonderful opportunities by our sponsoring organizations to find our true hearts, our real selves, our talents, and our passion to make a difference through service to our communities. Each of us has experienced what a comprehensive program that provides education, employment, personal counseling, caring adult mentors and role models, a positive peer group, leadership opportunities, pathways to college and careers, and service to our communities can mean to a lost soul. We have experienced the amazing respect and love that come from staff in organizations that are based on a philosophy of recognizing our sacred value and seeing us as potential assets to the community rather than threats to it. Before finding these blessed pathways, we suffered all manner of difficulties including child abuse, rapidly changing and sometimes abusive or neglectful foster care placements, homelessness, traumatic loss and suffering of family members through murder or the impact of chronic and fatal diseases, discrimination based on our race or ethnicity, gang violence, the absence of our fathers through murder or incarceration, the loss of our mothers through su***de or drug overdose, neighborhoods that were unsafe for children to even walk to school, teachers who told us we were doomed to fail, schools that kicked us out, public policies affecting Native Americans that prevented our tribes from building the infrastructure needed to support our people, police who stereotyped us and overlooked the ram-pant drug dealing surrounding us, and prison records that will follow us for the rest of our lives and lock many doors to us. In a thriving society that invests in its children and youth, supports family and community life, and is structured to diminish poverty, we should never have had to face these challenges as children and youth. Nonetheless, we have found ways to forgive those who hurt us, and to recognize and appreciate the learning’s and the strength we have gained from overcoming the odds. We are resilient. We are proud. We are smart. We are united. We aim to be a positive force for good in the world, motivated by love and guided by a strong moral and spiritual compass.
