Melissa Sawyer is the co-founder and executive director of the Youth Empowerment Project. 
The program provides services for vulnerable and out-of-school youth. Prior to opening YEP in 2004, Melissa earned her M.Ed. from Harvard University specializing in at-risk adolescents and urban education reform. In 1998, she was a Teach for America core member in New Orleans and assigned to Booker T. Washington High School.
Q: What is the Youth Empowerment Project?
A: We’re a nonprofit organization in New Orleans that addresses the needs of young people in our community, particularly those who have been identified with significant risk factors. They have been involved in the court system, have dropped out of school, been pushed out of school, or are under juvenile probation or parole.
Q: What sets your program apart?
A: We have a relationship-based model that is very individualized. We provide wrap-around services. As you can envision, by wrapping-around, we’re providing someone with all the emotional and psychological support they are going to need to grow into a successful person.
Q: Can you give us examples of wrap-around services?
A: We have a mentoring program where we provide a mentor who works with the kids, goes to their schools, picks up the mom or dad, does crisis intervention, takes them to tutoring, and takes them to enrichment programs. An education system that is going to succeed must include wrap-around services.
In our GED and NOPLAY Literacy Program, you can see tangible outcomes. Now, 49 of our young people received the GED. That is another step forward, but yet their challenges aren’t over whether they are college bound or want to be gainfully employed. We are currently assisting with ACT preparation, paying for registration fees, assisting with first time enrollment in first semester courses, and providing transition counseling. We also help with childcare assistance, filling out a job application, or getting a uniform. Once a kid is part of our work, they are always part of our work.
Q: What is your message to the greater community?
A: What I see in the community is a divisiveness in terms of one’s responsibility. We are all part of the same community and ultimately the health of this community is going to reflect the health of our young people. We want young people who are employed, paying taxes, and who aren’t a drain on other resources.
Q: How do you accomplish this?
A: We have to empower young people and give them the skill set to make healthy choices. We want them to continue on their path for success, and to know they always have a stable organization with caring, invested people behind them to make that happen.
The Youth Empowerment Project is a grantee of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, and it was one of the organizations featured on WWNO’s Community IMPACT Series sponsored by GNOF. Click here to listen to the interview.
