The Young Womens Project

Programs: The foster care campaign (fcc) builds the power of foster youth - training them as leaders and advocates, who work to expand educational options, improve placement conditions, decrease youth poverty, and expand youth rights for the 500 older youth in the system.

the peer health and sexuality education project (phase) engages dc youth as peer educators and advocates who work to improve health outcomes and reduce unplanned pregnancy by expanding comprehensive sexuality education, ensuring access to community and school based health care, and developing supportive policies. As phase's main program, the youth health educator program (yhep) hires 250 youth each year from 24 dc public high schools who work in their schools and communities educating their peers, distributing condoms, and referring youth to clinics. Working in partnership with dc public schools and the department of health (doh), yhep educators earn $8. 25 an hour for up to 6 hours a week and receive more than 50 hours of training in sexual health, sti/hiv prevention, peer education, contraception, long-acting reversible contraception (larcs), clinic referrals, counseling, facilitation, adultyouth partnership, project development, data collection and other issues. Last year ywp hired 246 youth who distributed 133,000 condoms and conducted 31,095 educational interventions reaching more than 7,000 youth and made 1,500 referrals to school based clinics.

the center for youth adults (cya) builds the capacity and networks of 100 young adults each year who are emancipating from dc's foster care system. Supported through a contract with the child and family service agency, this center-based program covers a range of interventions including casework, group capacity building training, support groups, employment opportunities, financial assistance, and leadership development. Young adults work toward meeting individual benchmarks for employment, parenting, education, housing, health, and other areas; several work on staff and leadership teams to guide and build the program.

capacity building focuses on three main areas: website development, strategic planning, and board development. This work, focuses on four areas: 1) develop, design, and expand the project's website and social media capacity; 2) complete a strategic planning and staff-board development process that provides essential organizational and environmental assessment information, produces a strategic plan and work plan that guides program expansion and organizational infrastructure development, and provides needed staff-board support and capacity building to move the plan forward; 3) share the rights, resources, results, and lessons gained through many years of successful advocacy and youth development work; and 4) build an alumni and individual donor network to expand capacity and raise funds from individuals and corporations.