Meet the Streets: Final Paper

Meet the Streets: Final Paper

Robin Bradley & Paige Lindquist

Clemson University

YDP 8020
Meet the Streets: Final Paper 2

II. Abstract

Meet the Streets is a youth program that focuses on serving the homeless youth

population through outreach, recovery, mentorship, and housing. The motto of Meet the Streets

is “meeting youth where they are to provide outreach, resources, and community.” Roughly

4.2 million youth find themselves experiencing homelessness in cities, towns, and suburbs across

the United States (Morton, Dwarsky, and Samuels, 2011). 69% of these youth, ages 13-25

reported some type of mental health issue (Morton, et al, 2011). The lack of a high school

diploma or GED is the primary predictor of youth adult homelessness (McCann, 2019). Because

of these issues, Meet the Streets was created to bring community, education, counseling, and

support to youth in need.

III. Goals

SHORT MEDIUM LONG

• Provide food • Sign up to attain GED • College degree (2 y

• Provide counseling
• Job referrals
• Housing information
• Make connections throu
gh relationships
• Provide mentors
• Begin attending AA/NA
meetings
• Any emergency medical
care
Meet the Streets has four main program areas: street outreach, a local recovery center,
• Help enroll in community ear or 4 year)
college classes, apply to jobs • Employed in
• Continue attending AA/NA a part time/full time
meetings position
• Continue meeting with • Reliable
mentors transportation, such as
• Help get health insurance the purchase of a car
• Help getting bus pass, access • In recovery from ad
to transportation -diction
• Established long
term housing

mentoring, and housing. With those four areas in mind, our program goals were created with the
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focus on the more immediate needs and extending to the long-term goals we hope our

participants remain with our program long enough to achieve. Every one’s timeline looks

differently, so we do not put pressure or parameters around how long you must stay in the

program. Depending on the needs of the youth, they may stay with our program for a few weeks

to a few years.

IV. Intended Participants

Meet the Streets is a local, non-profit organization that partners with neighboring

organizations to provide necessary resources to homeless youth, or those in transitional

housing. Our intended participants are youth, ages 17 to 25, who have a history of homelessness,

are currently homeless, or at-risk of being homeless. This may mean that they recently aged out

of foster care and have no other residence, or it could mean they are from a single parent

household and their parent cannot provide a safe and secure living environment (Morton, et al,

2011).

Our intended participants are those who need stability and security that they no

longer have or are at risk of losing. This includes youth of any gender and of any race. Meet the

Streets serves participants with different sexual orientations, educational backgrounds, and

emotional or behavioral challenges. Many of the youth we serve have some type of alcohol or

drug addiction and are not connected to resources that can provide them with the help they

need. Meet the Streets was created to focus on this need, as 29% of youth experiencing homeless

also struggled with some sort of substance abuse (Morton, et al, 2011).

V. Facilities

Meet the Streets’ primary focus is meeting youth on the streets of their city to

provide outreach and supplies they may need for everyday living. Due to this outreach, a
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building is not necessary for our street outreach program. Our workers and volunteers take turns

driving out to specific areas around the city with hopes of providing counseling, food, water, and

resources to homeless youth. Our recovery program, however, does require a building. The

building will be located within walking distance of the most common "hot spot" for

at risk youth in the area. The intentionality behind that is to make it close enough to encourage

the youth to come take advantage of the programs and services offered at the building. On the

other side, it will also be close enough for staff and volunteers to leave from the building to go

meet them on the streets where they are.

Equally important to physical safety is our participant’s psychological

safety. Youth are encouraged to come to this location when they need rest and restoration. They

can come here to escape bad weather, have a hot meal, receive healthcare, or fill out applications

for housing, school, and/or citizenship. There are also on-site counselors available who can talk

to them about their situation or connect them to addiction support groups, such as Alcoholics

Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. It is a place where connection is built, which Learner

(2004), as cited by Witt and Caldwell (2018), identifies as a very important asset of positive

youth development.

VI. Program Structure

Our organization was created to serve the many struggles that homeless youth, or youth

at-risk of experiencing homelessness, face each day. Because of this need, we have staff and

volunteers who help in various areas depending on the need that day. Meet the Streets’ recovery

center is open Monday through Friday, from 9AM until 5PM. It will also be open on the

weekends for breakfast and dinner hours only to allow for youth to receive meals they may

otherwise miss out on. This ensures that trained staff and/or volunteers are present when working
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with our participants. Youth in our program can meet with, or work with, a counselor or trained

volunteer outside of that time by appointment only.

There is no typical day for our program, but on certain days, Meet the

Streets provides street outreach. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, volunteers from the

community are invited to stop by our recovery center at 10 AM to pick up supplies, such as food,

blankets, water bottles, any job applications that local employers may have dropped off, and

other resources. These volunteers caravan those supplies into high volume areas and begin their

outreach through relationship building, while other volunteers stay behind at the recovery center

to serve homeless youth who may stop in. These recovery center volunteers vary from licensed

therapists and nurse practitioners to stay at home moms who volunteer their time to cook meals

for the youth. At the end of the day, the full-time staff members are responsible for closing the

center and preparing for any meetings or events that may be scheduled for the

next morning. Some of these events could include a resume workshop, a self-defense class, on-

site yearly physicals, and other life skills and wellness classes.

VII. Recruitment Strategies

The recruitment processes will start at high schools in the area. Since we will be

partnering with the high school counselors, they will know about all the services we provide and

supply this information to youth they see in need of our services. They will have flyers and

brochures to give to students as well. We will also promote our programs at YMCA’s and youth

centers near the “hot spots”. Flyers will be posted on their bulletin boards for anyone to see.

They will also be posted around town at community basketball courts, parks, anywhere that

youth may congregate and have access to the flyers. In addition to flyers being posted around

town, our heaviest form of recruitment will be word of mouth among participants. Youth tend to
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stick together and want to participate in activities with one another because they do not want to

feel alone. We will rely on them encouraging each other to participate, especially the ones that

have had positive experiences themselves in the programs.

VIII. Characteristics of Youth and Community

The youth involved in programs will be aged 17-25 and who have a history of

homelessness, at-risk of being homeless, or battling addiction. We do not plan to turn any youth

away that are in need of our services. The participants will come in on their own and will not be

forced to participate in any certain programs, just recommended to take advantage of what is

offered. A high school counselor may recommend a youth to one of our staff and encourage

them to reach out. The youth involved will be unique because a lot of young adults do not realize

they need to partake in alcohol recovery programs. They do not realize it has become a problem

and typically they do not have access to recovery programs for free at such a young age. They

will also be unique because they will be treated like adults but helped like children. We will be

there to offer any support and allow them to relax and let go of some of

the responsibilities. Youth involved for extended amounts of time will even have the opportunity

to volunteer at the recovery center as well. They will be able to help with some of the

daily operations if they desire and get more hands-on experience to help them acquire a job.

IX. Staff and Volunteers

The full-time staff for the Meet the Streets program will consist of four individuals with

trained psychological backgrounds in young adults/late adolescents. They will handle the

finances of the program, finding partners, and volunteer trainings. The program will run on

volunteers for all other aspects. The program will partner with local churches

to provide volunteers to run meals throughout the week. The hope is for these volunteers to want
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to get involved more and become part of the volunteers that partake in the meeting the streets

outreach aspect of the program by going to the local hot spots. These volunteers will go through

two full days of training. They will be educated on the different types of traumas, the 5 C’s of

positive youth development, and run through scenarios that may arise while they are

volunteering. In addition, they will complete an application, take online quizzes to test

understanding of content in training sessions, and have criminal background checks done on

them. Volunteers that are meeting the youth where they are will be required to commit to 10

hours of service a month. The lengthy process is intended to discourage anyone who is not

committed to the holistic development of the youth.

Other volunteers will come in the form of therapists, counselors, administrative

workers, and Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous group leaders. The full-time

staff will reach out to local high school counselors and recruit their services during the summer

when they are not consumed with the duties of their daily jobs. The staff will also recruit

licensed therapists to come in on the weekends and offer pro bono work to hold sessions with

any youth wanting to come in. All volunteers, except volunteers only providing meals, will

be required to take the Implicit Association Test on Race provided by Harvard (Project Implicit,

2018). According to Witt and Caldwell (2018), supportive adults are critical to the development

of youth in their journey to adulthood. These adults can present themselves in many ways,

including as volunteers from the community.

X. Resources Needed

Meet the Streets will run out of a local center for recovery outreach. The building will

be located within walking distance of the most common hangout spot for at risk youth in the

area. It is where the youth will come for meals, therapy and counseling sessions, and clothes or
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furniture. Relying heavily on donations, most of our resources will come from restaurants,

grocery stores, thrift stores, and local families and churches making donations. Part of the duties

of the full-time staff include building relationships with grocery stores to donate meals. The main

outreach center will provide dinner each weeknight as well as breakfast and dinner on the

weekends. Meals would be a large monetary factor, so these donations would leave room for that

money to be allocated to other areas such as finding housing or therapy sessions for youth.

Thrift stores such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army have requirements and restrictions

on the items they can take into their stores. The partnership with these organizations

will utilize them as resources to finding clothes and furniture for apartments for the youth

involved. One of the goals is helping homeless youth find established housing. On top of that

goal, we want to help provide them with furniture to fill the apartment. The main building for

Meet the Streets will have a room that stores all donations. Anything thrift stores send us, or

volunteers bring in for donations will be kept in the room. There will always be volunteers in

charge of keeping inventory on the donation room as well as monitoring it. Youth will be limited

to how much they are allowed to take out of the room based on need, income, and housing

situation.

XI. Evaluation Procedures

Evaluation of the program’s success will be tracked by the number of participants who

started the program at risk of dropping out of high school and end up graduating from high

school. The next level of the evaluation will be how many of those students go on to attend some

form of college, whether that be community college or all the way through a doctoral degree.

Another way of tracking success and evaluation will be based on the number of

participants that come back in the future to volunteer. Someone in the program, either a
Meet the Streets: Final Paper 9

volunteer or staff member, had to have a positive impact on them for the participant to want to

come back and help someone else. Success can typically be measured by retention rates. We

want youth to participate in services provided, but only for a certain amount of time. The goal is

for them to overcome the issue at hand (alcoholism, homelessness, at risk of dropping out of

school) and graduate out of the program. A program designed to have a limited time of retention

like Meet the Streets, shows retention rates as those participants that come back and help years

later.

The AA and NA meetings will be evaluated by the participates at the end of each quarter.

They will rate the group leader, session content, and ways they feel it can be improved. When

youth are leaving or graduating out of the Meet the Streets program as a whole, they will fill out

a survey on their involvement and rate their experience overall. They will state all the ways

they participated, what their favorite and least favorite programming was, aspects they would

change, and more.

XII. Program Summary

To successfully run Meet the Streets, it is important to create a program that focuses on

the eight features of positive youth development, as presented by Eccles and Gootman (2002).

Physiologically/Physically • Structured to provide outreach, counseling in a

Safe safe environment

• Must have at least 3 trained volunteers that work with Meet

the Streets present during business hours

Appropriate Structure • Recovery center is open Monday through Friday, during

the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM

• If someone needs our services outside of that, they must

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have an appointment

• Boundaries in place to protect our youth and our volunteers

Supportive Relationships • Recruiting volunteers who have a heart for this community

• Trustworthy volunteers who commit their time

and energy for the youth population

Opportunities to Belong • Support groups that build community

Positive Social Norms • Treating them like youth not battling homelessness

• Encouraging their uniqueness

Support for Efficacy • Opportunities for youth to use their voice, speak about their

needs and what they want to gain from the program

Opportunities for Skill • Teaching financial responsibility

Building • Job seeking

Integration of Family, • Integration of community members as volunteers in

School and Community multiple areas of outreach

We want to help the youth, but also treat them as normally as possible. Meet the Streets is

designed to help the underserved populations of youth who cannot typically help themselves.

Youth aged 17 through 25 typically get left out because they are considered adults, but if no one

has taught them basics of becoming an adult, such as how to budget their money or find a

job, then they may not know how to. At Meet the Streets we want to provide them any

opportunity they desire for themselves and help them achieve those goals that they may

have previously been told were unattainable. We want them to feel comfortable and completely

accepted in all programs offered.

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XIII. References

Eccles, J., & Gootman, J. A. (Eds.) (2002). Community programs to promote youth

development. Committee on community-level pro- grams for youth. Washington: National

Academy Press.

ProjectImplicit. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.

McCann, M. (2019, June 5). Partnering to End Youth Homelessness. Retrieved June 19, 2020,

from https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/partnering-to-end-youth-

homelessness.aspx

Morton, M.H., Dworsky, A., & Samuels, G.M. (2017). Missed opportunities: Youth

homelessness in America. National estimates. Chicago, IL: Chapin Hall at the University

of Chicago.

Witt, P.A. and Caldwell, L. (2018). Youth Development: Principles and Practices in Out-of-

School Time Settings. 2nd edition. Sagamore Venture.