Sandre R Swanson Youth Foundation

Programs: Our foundation in 2016 is proud of our support for our boys and men of color program working with and providing technical support to numerous community based organizations that also share our mission. We worked to empower boys and men of color to improve their quality of life and help them make a positive contribution to our community. We supported the work of organizations that included: the california endowment; policy link; the east oakland youth development center, the city of oakland, 100 black men inc. , the mentoring center, oakland unified school district, project ceasefire, peralta community college district, bay areas pastors and the oakland education cabinet. (partial list). Our foundation worked with many individual and organizations on policy development and activities in support of solutions to the problems of at-risk youth. Our outreach efforts continue to include areas of support for education, health, employment opportunity, juvenile justice & safety, crime reduction and high school preparation for graduation. Our foundation in 2016 continued our support for the my bothers keeper initiative (mbk). Our foundation along with other non-profits provided strategies and action plans for local initiatives in support of mbk. Our foundation president continues his outreach in support of the national call to action and the networking regarding our shared mission in support of that call. This alliance lead by nonprofits included the california endowment, an organization that we have been working with from the beginning of our boys and men of color activities, the annie e. Casey foundation, the atlantic philanthropies, bloomberg philanthropies, the ford foundation, the john s. And james l. Knight foundation, the open society foundation, the robert wood johnson foundation, the w. K. Kellogg foundation, the nathan cummins foundation, and the kapor center for social impact. A number these foundations are also members of the executives alliance to expand opportunities for boys and men of color- a coalition of philanthropic institutions committed to leveraging philanthropy's role in improving life outcomes for boys and men of color. Our foundation has also been working with other groups to design strategies for a broad collaborative effort to leverage a positive impact for the goals of our initiative assisting boys and men of color and all at risk young people. Our foundation continued in 2016 to work for specifics goals in this regard. Working with our local community colleges and high schools our foundation this year joined the community effort to implement a coherent cradle-to-college-and-career strategy for improving the life outcomes of all young people to ensure that they can reach their full potential, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or the circumstances into which they were born. This year we continued our work on the following goals: ensuring all children enter school cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally ready ensuring all children read at grade level by 3rd grade ensuring all youth graduate from high school ensuring all youth complete post-secondary education or training ensuring all youth out of school are employed ensuring all youth remain safe from violent crime we continue to meet and plan in 2016 with our local partners on these goals and our mission. This involved numerous outreach efforts on strategies to reduce the number of at-risk boys of color that end up in the criminal justice pipeline, alternatives to detention in juvenile justice facilities or state prisons. We supported after-school programs and mental health services that keep boys of color on a developmentally positive path to success. We continued in 2016 our corporate outreach to assist our work with our boys and men of color project. We ask our corporate partners to leverage our outreach into maximum contributions for at-risk youth in our community. We requested that our partners work with us, our local schools and community colleges to assist our at-risk youth. Additionally, we requested that they work with our service organizations that serve at-risk youth and families. Also we are happy that many of our partners have agreed to give direct scholarships as a result of our outreach to them. Srs youth foundation board and volunteers continued to work on our entire list of goals consistent with our mission to assist at-risk youth. Our foundation in 2016 continued our outreach and referral services with our partners in the following areas: - educational support programs, scholarships and internships - life-skills & career development seminars, which include job preparation, financial literacy, vocational education preparedness. - green technology and construction job training for at-risk youth. - homeless support referral services, especially for youth. This year scott's restaurant was our major financial supporter and sponsor of our foundation's work and supported our computer scholarship program of a dell laptop computer to youth in need. We continued our support and partnership with the east oakland youth development center pathway to college program. We were happy in 2016 to continue the building of a reliable group of community partners who support our short and long term missions.