Dr. Betsy Murray, M.D. , SPYS Board Member, Knows About Resilient Children

Dr. Katherine (Betsy) Murray, M.D., chose to join the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors in August 2009 because she saw “an organization that is thinking about alternative explanations for why children do what they do”.  Dr. Murray is a development/behavior specialist in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota  which means she knows the relationship between brain development, from the neurologic perspective, and what we see as human behavior. As a practicing physician, Dr. Murray sees many children in the medical clinic because of some problems with brain development that can lead to difficult behaviors due to such problems as anxiety, attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and depression. In her work, she can use her medical knowledge to help her patients and their families understand these behaviors and often how to change them.    She also is interested in how behaviors that we repeat many times can lead to changes in how our brains work.

She observes in her clinic practice how youth with difficult behaviors have profound childhood resiliency to overcome their burdens. Similarly, she observes how St. Paul Youth Services programs for youth at risk brings out the same resiliency in the 1000 youth with whom the staff works.  She also sees the same focus on parent education in St. Paul Youth Services programs that she adheres to in her work with clinic patients.

Dr. Murray’s professional interests intersect with St. Paul Youth Services because both are deeply concerned about the way the juvenile justice system does not often enough take youth brain development into  consideration when determining consequences for offenses.  As a Board of Directors member, Dr. Murray observes repeatedly how staff, as she said, ‘think outside the box’  and reach large numbers in the community;  for example, 2580 people in Ramsey County in 2010 benefited from St. Paul Youth Services community outreach in one of two ways:

• Educational trainings by agency staff  on the dynamics of survival-based youth and positively engaging with them;

• Movies followed by discussion groups on the racial inequities in both the schools and legal system affecting African American males.

Dr. Murray enjoys the opportunity to use her time on the St. Paul Board of Directors to expand her view of the world as a medical doctor treating a single child patient and his/her family in the clinic every day.  In this volunteer role, she contributes both insight and advocacy of the agency’s programs to help youth with challenging behaviors. She sees how, with the right help, many of them move beyond these deep challenges to a happy secure present and a hopeful, enriching future.

Partnering for Success

As we all get back into the routine of the school year, I’m confident that you join us in our concern about the fact that in Minnesota over 40% of African American boys don’t graduate from high school on time.

One of the things St. Paul Youth Services has been doing for over 10 years to address this concern is to partner with St. Paul Public Middle Schools to reduce suspension rates – which disproportionately affect African American boys, particularly in their middle school years. Being out of the classroom means that students aren’t learning. The result is that they fall behind their classmates and if a pattern develops, they never catch up. Years ago Principal Mike McCollor told us that in a school of approximately 700 middle school students, we lose about 100 per year due to behavior problems in the school/classroom.

Through our Behavior Intervention Program, we place staff full-time in middle schools to provide one-on-one intervention, support and accountability for youth who would otherwise be suspended. We also work with teachers to understand the needs of these student and develop the skills to better engage them in the classroom.

An example of our success is that at Washington Technology Secondary School, we have been able to help the staff reduce the number of discipline referrals by 72% and the number of students suspended by 50%. Ninety-five percent (95%) of teachers report that our staff are a source of information/support and 97% said we help establish appropriate behavior norms for all students.

We know that as students improve their behavior, teachers improve their skills, and buildings establish clear expectations for all students, schools become a place where ALL students can learn.

Our Behavior Intervention Program depends on financial support from people like you who are interested in these kinds of results that lead to more of our students succeeding in school. So today, I’m asking you to join us as a partner in these efforts by making a financial contribution to the program.

You can contribute in one of two ways:

(1) Send a check to St. Paul Youth Services, 2100 Wilson Avenue, St. Paul MN 55119

(2) Via credit card at GiveMN

Thank you so much for your support!

Cathy W. Morley – Service Comes in Many Forms – All are Important

 Cathy Morley brings a lifetime of stewardship to her position as Secretary of the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors. Cathy grew up in a family that lived its strong social values. Her parents taught her the importance of giving to others. One of the sayings she has lived by much of her life is, ‘for those who receive much, much is expected’.

Cathy began sharing what she had with others at a young age. Her family moved to the Twin Cities from Cloquet, Minnesota when she was a child. In high school, under her father’s guidance, she began volunteering at the Union Gospel Mission with the young people who came there. As a volunteer, she participated in hands-on projects with the youth and taught art to many of them. She drove them to swimming beaches and took them on other field trips. She witnessed ‘smart, fun kids handling adversity in their lives as best they could’. She saw the world through their eyes and was grateful for the opportunity to engage with others in this way.

As an adult, Cathy took on a key role in the stewardship of funds for the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Foundation, named for her grandparents. Cathy reads many proposals from non-profit social service agencies that are doing very similar work; she believes they would be more efficient and effective if they collaborated in their work.

In 2007, Bob Long, former Chair of the St. Paul Youth Services Board, invited Cathy to consider a proposal for funding the St. Paul Youth Service’s Capital Campaign. Cathy was impressed to learn that collaboration was central to St. Paul Youth Service’s successful programming. Government agencies covering both human service and criminal justice programs as well as public schools are among the groups with which the agency collaborates to redirect youth who are beginning to get in trouble at school, home or with the law. Cathy valued how the agency achieved this mission through strong community partnerships.

Therefore, in 2009, when Cathy agreed to join the St. Paul Youth Service’s Board of Directors, she already had a positive impression of the agency’s strategic approach to getting the most results from its funders. She also had recently completed a term on the Board of the St. Paul Boys and Girls Club. She wanted to sustain her commitment to participate in ways that help youth who have limited resources and often lack the family support needed to get through difficult times.

Cathy brings her expertise as a funder to the agency’s Board. She is a good resource for advising the agency’s leadership and other Board members on ways to enhance both the number and intensity of ‘friends of the agency’ who may contribute to its mission. She looks forward to adding her ideas to the conversations on this subject in the months ahead.

Cathy also values her experience on the Board because of a personal experience she had with one of the agency’s programs. One of her children made a bad decision with a few others: they illegally trespassed on an abandoned property to play a game of ‘flashlight tag.’ Police in the neighborhood caught and arrested them.  Cathy learned first-hand how the agency’s Pre-Court Diversion Program works with youth to help them learn from their mistakes and make appropriate restitution through community service.

Cathy’s service on the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors speaks to her life-long commitment to give of herself in ways that advance the well-being of others, particularly youth. As she reflected, ‘you have to give it away to keep it.’ For Cathy Morley, this means using her gifts of empathy for others and her knowledge of how to best steward the resources you have.

Kathy Lantry Takes ‘Being a Good Neighbor’ to New Heights In Her Professional and Volunteer Work

Kathy Lantry, President of the St. Paul City Council since 2003, is a life-long resident of St. Paul’s East Side. She draws inspiration for her professional work from her deep commitment to being a ‘good neighbor’ and ‘good citizen’ herself, and wanting to be sure that others are as well. She is a problem solver who takes a pragmatic approach and therefore is motivated to tie her values to action. For Kathy this means working to ensure that people have the resources they need to make their neighborhoods good places for all to live.

As a high-energy politician, who is always in negotiations with others to assign resources to the best programs, Kathy is always on the watch for programs that are strongly ‘results-oriented’, where staff uses money they receive from government  and others wisely as evidenced by improvements in the lives of people they serve.

One day in 1994, Kathy Lantry was listening to Nancy LeTourneau, Executive Director of St. Paul Youth Services, talk about the agency’s programs to redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at school, at home or with the law.  Nancy’s skill as a great storyteller drew Kathy’s attention to the agency; she made an immediate connection to needs in her own neighborhood and saw in the programs Nancy was describing an excellent approach to ensuring that youth stay active, positively involved, productive, and accountable to others.   In 2003, Kathy joined the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors; in 2012, Kathy begins her two-year term as its Chair.

Kathy sees in the agency programs some of the same structures of support and accountability that she internalized growing up in a close-knit family whose lives centered on being responsible to family and neighbors and helping others, either through their faith community or in the political arena.  Kathy remembers traveling with her family to Iowa in 1968 as a young girl to work on the Presidential campaign of then Vice President Hubert Humphrey.   She received additional family inspiration for her future career in politics from her mother who became one of the first women members of the Minnesota Senate.

Kathy grew up two blocks from where she now lives with her husband and where her two young adult sons return to stay for various periods.    She has huge loyalty for her community. She sees some of the city’s challenges to handle conflicts due to diversity of culture and class in some of the tensions that resulted from rapid cultural change in her own neighborhood. One of those tensions is many young people outdoors in public spaces with little opportunity for productive activity and therefore often causing disturbances. She is grateful for the wisdom that St. Paul Youth Service’s Director of Programs, Dave Wilmes, brings to understanding how to work effectively with youth with challenging behaviors.   She wishes there were ‘hundreds of Dave’ to work with representatives of many community agencies so they could be more effective in working with these same youth.  She sees the way the organization’s program counselors work effectively with youth, particularly through the All Children Excel (ACE) and Behavior Intervention Program (BIP) as new models for helping these youth be more engaged and accountable in their communities.

Kathy enjoys her volunteer time on the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors because she likes ‘being part of something’.  She values the cohesiveness of the Board members to focus on mission and strategies, – the latter emphasized in new ways following the 2010 Board Strategic Planning Process.  She says Board members work well together because everyone is ‘picking up the rope and all pulling in the same direction’.  Kathy reflects on her strength as providing ‘directness’ to Board discussion and the courage to “cut to the chase” and make decisions.  She thrives on the opportunity to ‘identify the problem and seek the solution’, a process that requires both focus and creativity from everyone and providing Kathy with the opportunity to use her proven leadership skills.

U.S Departments of Justice and Education to Target “School to Prison Pipeline”

From Education Week.

A new undertaking from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education targets school discipline policies that end up pushing children into the juvenile-justice system for crimes and rule-breaking on campus—and keeping them from pursuing their education.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveiled the Supportive School Discipline Initiative at a meeting of a Justice Department committee meeting Thursday afternoon.

“When our young people start getting locked up early… they start to move out of schools, out of the pipeline to success,” Mr. Duncan said. He recalled how when he led Chicago public schools, he found that 7 percent of schools were responsible for more than half of the arrests of young people in the city. A small group of principals were calling the police too often to deal with minor disciplinary issues, he said, while schools with similar demographics handled the same behavior problems in other ways.

“People wanted to do the right thing. They just didn’t know better,” he said. “So many of these children need assistance. What they don’t need is to be pushed out the door.”

The initiative announced Thursday has four parts:
• building consensus for action among federal, state and local education and justice stakeholders;
• collaborating on research and data collection needed to shape policy, such as evaluations of alternative disciplinary policies and interventions;
• developing guidance to ensure school discipline policies and practices are in line with the federal civil rights laws;
• and promoting awareness and knowledge about evidence-based and promising policies and practices.

Holder and Duncan referenced a report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center from earlier this week that found that more than half of all Texas middle and high school students were suspended or expelled at least once between 7th and 12th grades.

“I think these numbers are kind of a wake-up call,” Mr. Holder said. “It’s obvious we can do better.”

To learn more about what St. Paul Youth Services is doing to address this issue, read our recent article about the Behavior Intervention Program.

Cheryl Schmura: Both Numbers and The Human Spirit Are Important To Her As Board Treasurer

In her day job, Cheryl Schmura, serves in a high-level position in an agricultural business where she focuses on ensuring people make good decisions to grow the business.  In her volunteer role as Treasurer of the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors, Cheryl is attuned to staff making good decisions on the financial health of the agency and on the growth of programs that benefit youth at risk. Cheryl joined the Board in 2007, bringing strong experience as a Financial Director for 3M’s largest business. She is also a member of the Board’s Strategic Planning and Finance Committees.

What unites her paid and her volunteer roles is a deep value that “we need to live purposeful lives and make a difference where our talents lie”.  Cheryl recognizes in Nancy LeTourneau, Executive Director, and Dave Wilmes, Director of Services, a combination of vision to imagine new and better ways to reach vulnerable youth and their families and ways to execute that vision – a combination she views as ‘unusual’. She considers their leadership talent as the ability to see the changes in the community, anticipate future need for services, imagine, test and adapt programs to deliver these services, and develop the community partners to sustain them.  As a person with professional expertise in assessing financial risk, Cheryl admires the way St. Paul Youth Services staff exhibit resourcefulness in finding ways to accomplish a great deal with modest funding levels.

This combination is also part of Cheryl’s way of seeing the world. In her personal wisdom, “Life is about taking risks; life is a short journey and we have to try a lot of things”.  She sees this same commitment in the entire agency’s staff and admires its passion for youth and their families, and for making changes in community institutions that will better serve youth.

Cheryl’s faith is a source of strength that inspires concrete action. Serving on the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors flows from this faith source.  She understands and acts on the value that we all “have an obligation to give back”.  Cheryl has been a foster parent for two nephews. Of that experience she reflected, “Life is about confidence and we have an obligation to instill confidence and create the experiences that will result in new confidence”.

Cheryl is a strong advocate for St. Paul Youth Services’ early intervention programs. The phrase, attributed to Fredrick Douglas, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men,” inspires her. She is also a realist and a pragmatist who believes firmly that the ‘earlier we do, the less we need to do’.  She admires this philosophy in all of the agency’s direct service programs.

Cheryl says her contribution to the Board begins with providing oversight to the agency’s finances where her role is to be a “link between the operations staff who prepare the numbers and the Board members and auditors who use the numbers to provide governance”.  She also enjoys helping to “identity and drive new programs to reach out to youth who need us”.

Cheryl Schmura is grounded in both the human reality of faith, experience, hope, vision, caring and the practical reality of budgets, financial forecasting, fund-raising strategies and needs; together they give her life deep meaning and  she brings these wonderful gifts to the asset column of St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors.

Behavior Intervention Program Specialists – St. Paul School Staff and Students Value Their Role

St. Paul Youth Services has an 11-year history through our Behavior Intervention Program (BIP) of tackling school suspension by holding students accountable for their behavior and helping them get back on track academically. You can find more information about the program and an example of our work with students here.

This spring, we asked teachers in the four schools we have specialists to tell us how the BIP program helps them be more effective in the classroom. Results from 134 respondents confirm ways BIP Specialists successfully partner with staff:

Source: St. Paul Youth Services, Spring 2011

As an outcome of this partnership, teachers enhance their own skills both in overall classroom behavior management and in the way they work individually with students who are being disruptive in the classroom. In the words of one teacher,

• “Mr. Runsewe has been just what we needed. He is direct, calm, and reasonable when he explains to teachers why a student is acting disruptive or angry, and he is calming, and direct with students. Students and staff are responding to his approach and moving forward in a positive direction. His goal is always to get the student back on track as quickly as possible and puts the focus on what to do about getting their credits and getting their work accomplished instead of the behavior….Mr. Runsewe also provides needed discipline when necessary. Students, who continue to misbehave, even after he is sure that the expectations are clear, are calmly assigned detentions per the schools’ behavior policy. Mr. Runsewe uses that time to counsel students to steer them more positive directions.”

A Specialist tells a story of her recent work with a student:

Camil, a 7^th grade student at the now former Hazel Park Middle School was referred to the Behavior Intervention Program for being frequently  late to class, disrupting the classroom by being confrontational with  teachers and students and refusing to do her class work. She also had a difficult time complying with the school’s uniform policies. Her grades were suffering tremendously – risking that she would find doors to good educational experiences closing on her if she did not change her behavior.

I met with Camil weekly to develop a behavior and academic intervention plan that would help get Camil back on track.  Our relationship became stronger over several months of one-to-one meetings and Camil began to trust me.  During one of our meetings, she admitted she was tired of the way things were and she was ready for a change.  She told me that older girls had bullied her with name-calling and negative comments on her appearance when she attended summer school several months earlier.  As a result, she began to lose confidence in herself. The bullying continued into the school year and she become more and more distressed.   I came to see that Camil took on a ‘tough girl’ or ‘bad-kid’ image with her teachers when other students were around. She hoped that by making this protective shell f at least, no one would ‘mess with’ her. Perhaps the girls who had bullied her would like her more now and choose her as a friend.  In private conversations with the teachers, however, Camil was more herself, respectful and attentive to talking with the teacher; she would not identify the bullies for fear they would hurt her.

I worked with Camil to resolve her school safety concerns and to help her begin to make positive connections with girls in the school who were friendly and wanted to be friends with her.  She joined a S.O.S, (sisters of success) group that I run as a way for her to build friendships.  Now that she was not needing to be the ‘bad-kid’ she was able to go five straight weeks without angry outbursts,  e.g., she was on time for classes most of the time, was not argumentative with teachers  and began to complete her class work. Camil was now enjoying school.

Submitted by Barbie Woodruff – Behavior Intervention Program Counselor

Jim McDonough Begins his Service as Chair, St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors

Jim McDonough, member of the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, is the new chair of the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors. His journey to this role began when he was 13 years old and his father died. Jim said he and his five siblings needed adults besides their mother to provide structure and to help prepare them for adulthood. He is grateful for the extended family/friends who took over and gave him that guidance during the next few years. At age 25, McDonough joined the Phalen Recreation Center staff as a volunteer youth worker. He always held the kids accountable for their behavior and in other ways guided them to responsible actions whenever they were in the building to participate in fun activities. In our conversation he reflected that youth who receive good mentorship, i.e., are held accountable and given good direction, “cannot – not accept” the help they receive in these settings. They might not show how much they benefit from the positive influences right away, but they will – as he did when he was a teen – benefit from the help and guidance they receive.

Jim joined the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors in June 2003; board membership gave him a new setting to make a positive difference in the lives of youth in need of caring adults in their lives. His view is that youth who have very troubled family histories don’t choose those events in which they find themselves, but it is those very circumstances that often lead them to make poor choices. The mission of the St. Paul Youth Services to ‘redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at home, at school or with the law’ suited his commitment to these youth.

As a Ramsey County Commissioner, Jim also values associating with a quality non-profit agency working in partnership with the government. He is proud of the history of St. Paul Youth Services. It was founded in 1973 as a part of the St. Paul Police Department to manage a PreCourt Diversion program. Staff succeeded in their purpose and also expanded programming innovation. After several years, the agency evolved into a stand-alone non-profit organization. Jim ranks St. Paul Youth Services as an exemplary model of non-profit and government staff working side-by-side on common goals; he thinks the model should be replicated more.

Jim is also very appreciative of the genuine caring for youth that he sees in the staff led by Nancy LeTourneau, Executive Director. He shared that government “needs to be doing this kind of work” to counterbalance so many of the extreme responses to challenging youth that are often on display – either doing nothing or using the juvenile justice system.

Jim thinks the reputation of St. Paul Youth Services is “extremely high” by those who know about its early intervention programs. As examples, he cited the positive training adults receive from Dave Wilmes; Dave trains adults – such as staff of the St. Paul libraries who encounter youth with challenging behaviors – on how they can effectively engage youth. As a result, fewer youth are forced to leave the libraries. Jim noted that “these are the kids that we want in the library every day because the libraries are safe places for them to be”. Jim also identified St. Paul Youth Services’ Behavior Intervention Program in St. Paul middle schools where counselors are successful at helping youth improve their classroom behaviors, attendance and grades. The result is that fewer youth are suspended from school. Jim observed that it is fruitless to suspend students who have no adults at home to whom they are accountable. He summarized that “everyone believes it [St. Paul Youth Services’ early intervention programming] is a good thing”.

Thinking of the year ahead as Board chair, Jim likes the fact that the St. Paul Youth Services’ Board functions primarily to guide policy – as was done recently when Board members completed their Strategic Plan for 2011-2013 . Jim said he is looking forward to using his strengths as both a ‘good listener’ and a ‘respectful questioner’ to help St. Paul Youth Services continue to make a positive difference in the lives of over 1000 youth annually.

Preventing the Unimaginable

Two-year old Emily was sexually assaulted and then killed in 2006 by her day-care provider’s 13 year-old son. To try to put ourselves in the shoes of her parents, Lynne and Travis Johnson, is unimaginable. There just aren’t words. But the two of them have taken the courageous stance of trying to do something about this so that no other parent ever has to experience the unimaginable.

For the last few years, they have worked with the Minnesota Legislature to pass what has become known as “Emily’s Law.” This year’s version received a hearing last Thursday by the public safety committee. The issue the bill attempts to address is that the 13 year-old who committed the crime was tried in juvenile court and the Johnsons felt the sentence was too lenient. Current law in Minnesota is that, in order to be tried as an adult, the juvenile must be at least 14 years of age. One aspect of the bill would allow children as young as 10 to be tried as an adult for a “violent juvenile offense.”

There has been a debate going on in this country for the last decade about whether or not juveniles should be tried as adults. It is important to look at the research developing around this issue to determine whether or not it is an effective policy. But the real dilemma seems to be – not what can we do after a horrific crime like this has been committed – but what can we do to prevent it from happening in the first place. We need to ask ourselves why a 13 year-old would sexually assault and then kill a 2 year-old. Were there no warning signs that this young man was in trouble? And if so, could something have been done to intervene with him prior to this horrific act?

In 2003, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) took up these issues in a series that looked at the prevalence and risk factors associated with what they called “child delinquency.” One report titled Prevalence and Development of Child Delinquency found that child delinquents between the ages of 7 and 12 have a two- to threefold greater risk of becoming serious, violent, and chronic offenders. Another study titled Risk and Protective Factors of Child Delinquency provides information that helps us identify and develop effective intervention strategies.

A few years ago, Ramsey County – in partnership with St. Paul Youth Services – created the All Children Excel (ACE) Program based on this information from OJJDP. The County identifies “child delinquents” who are under the age of 10. St. Paul Youth Services provides these youth and their families with long-term intervention, case management and mentoring. Based on outside research of the program, 70% of the children involved did not have a subsequent arrest prior to age 14, compared to 17% for a control group with equal risks that did not receive these intensive services.

In the case of Emily’s Law, the House public safety committee decided to not act on the bill, but members indicated a desire to do further study of the juvenile justice system for possible changes. I hope they review the kind of information on this provided by OJJDP and focus their efforts on preventing the unimaginable from ever happening to another Emily.

The Ambassadors for Youth Academy is Back!

Having trouble with a child you are working with or a child of your own? Do their actions have you wondering just what planet they hale from? Maybe you’ve lost the fire you once held for working with youth? Or your passion for working with youth was perhaps stomped out by various disappointments? Fear not, for we have just the solution to your dilemma, The Ambassadors for Youth Academy (AFYA)!  According to one of our alums, “The AFYA academy will help you realize that your work with youth has not been in vain; that the youth and their families need you!”

Here at St. Paul Youth Services we work with many families, as well as the community, to re-direct youth who are starting to get in trouble at home, at school, or with the law. One initiative we have taken to further this goal is the Ambassadors for Youth Academy. We have held two successful academies in the North End and Payne/Phalen neighborhoods and graduated 56 participants.

The Academy empowers neighbors to effectively engage with youth in a positive and helpful manner. It also enables adults to become advocates for youth in their neighborhood, thereby reducing the number of calls the police receive concerning youth behavior and allowing police officers to focus on the more pressing public safety concerns. In addition, participants gain the knowledge and confidence to engage with youth in their communities and the opportunity to network with like-minded folks who are connected with the well being of youth.

The Ambassadors for Youth Academy is an 8 week program that is held on Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30. At the end of the program we ask participants to develop an action plan based on what they learned from class. After successfully completing the program each participant receives a $200 stipend and a certificate for their participation.

Here are some examples of the action plans from our past AFYA participants:

One of our past participants wrote, “My plan is to form an after school program for girls ages 7-15 in the Oxford/Lafond and University/Rice area where we will provide after school snacks, homework help, incentives for good grades and a place to share ideas and concerns.”

Another participant founded a group called “Recycle America” which influences youth to take care of the environment. The group walks around the neighborhood on Saturdays and cleans up the litter in the neighborhood as well as collects recyclable items to turn into recycling centers to help fund their programming activities such as pizza parties and field trips.

The Ambassadors for Youth Academy is a great program and we enjoy learning from the participants. We are honored to have worked with some wonderful community members through our academy that are truly making a difference in the lives of kids on a daily basis. Below you will find some of the testimonies of our AFYA alums.

“The Ambassadors for Youth Academy (AFYA) was the training that I needed to catapult me into the next dimension of my career and self-employment. I was very blessed to be a part of the academy and I feel more confident in working with families and youth from the information that I acquired. Thank you St. Paul Youth Services!”- Shatona Groves, graduate of the Payne/Phalen Ambassadors for Youth Academy

“The academy gave me hope and confidence that I could use my experiences to help youth living in poverty.  I give credit to the Ambassadors for Youth Academy for showing me the value in my life experiences and assuring me that my struggle was not in vain.  I recommend the academy to anyone who wants to understand today’s youth and work with them to find the value they have to offer our society.” - Donald Ingram, graduate of the North End Ambassadors for Youth Academy

“The Academy allows you to share your experiences and hear the experiences of others in their work with youth, and perhaps most importantly, “You get to meet people like yourself who care about the future of their community and the youth of today.”- Emmanuel Woode, graduate of the Payne/Phalen Ambassadors for Youth Academy

The next Ambassadors for Youth Academy will be held on Tuesday evenings, beginning March 22^nd to May 10^th in the Frogtown/Summit U neighborhood at the Martin Luther Recreation Center located at 271 N Kent St St Paul, MN 55102. For more information or to register for the Academy contact Leila Paye, Community Connections Manager, at 651-771-1301 or email her at lpaye@spys.org

Ambassadors for Youth Academy Flyer

Ambassadors for Youth Academy Application