Freedom 4 Youth hires new program director to increase services for youths in juvenile justice system
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Freedom 4 Youth, a nonprofit organization in Santa Barbara, is boosting its efforts to help youths caught up in the juvenile legal system.
"It works to uplift and empower youth that are currently or formally incarcerated or system impacted in someway," said executive director Billi Jo Starr of Freedom 4 Youth.
The organization provides individualized case management for youth with the goal to enhance life skills.
Now, the grassroots program is expanding its services thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara.
"And this helped us because we were able to hire a program Director, Leandra Harris, and we were also able to expand and start offering our services to young women that our system impacted," said Starr.
The new program director Leandra Harris was thrilled to hit the ground running.
“So as the youth program Director, I oversee the coordinators, the programming that we offer the youth at the schools and any other programming that we may do with the juvenile halls," said youth program director Leandra Harris of Freedom 4 Youth.
Daniel Palma is grateful for the support he received from Freedom 4 Youth.
"I met freedom 4 youth when I was incarcerated and been trying to change my life and this nonprofit helped me do that and now I have the opportunity to cook and help kids and stuff like that," said chef Palma of Freedom 4 Youth.
"Very happy that they gave me a chance to come here and help everybody out. We got a chance to help all these kids that need help with homework with guidance," said art teacher Frank Lopez of Freedom 4 Youth.
Freedom 4 Youth hopes to continue helping more youths develop the skills they need to improve self-esteem, communication, relationships, and take control of their lives.
"We look forward to just expanding the very cool thing with freedom for youth is that we’re able to follow them where we meet them all the way through to college or wherever they decide to go," said Harris.
Since 2011, Freedom 4 Youth has trained 137 UCSB volunteer mentors who have supported over 2,000 incarcerated youth.
