Philadelphia is no stranger to youth violence in its city. According to the Data Hub, Allegheny West has one of the highest violent crime rates of any town in the city. This town is also home to The YouthBuild Philly Charter School, a school for young adults without their diplomas to gain credentials while learning vital job skills using academics and community service.
Le’Yondo Dunn, current CEO of the YouthBuild Philly Charter School, has always been an advocate for education. In his home of Southeast Louisiana, Dunn learned the power that education can hold, and he has kept that with him through his journey.
While young adults could be attending the YouthBuild Philly Charter School for plenty of reasons, there are certainly some that violence plays a role in the issues that led them to this route. With the violent crime of Allegheny West and Philadelphia being as high as it is, there are places like Dunn’s YouthBuild Philly Charter who take the responsibility of giving kids, teenagers, and young adults an outlet to avoid misfortunate events that can change someone’s life trajectory.
What are the primary factors contributing to youth violence in Philadelphia?
The way that I would kind of synthesize this is that the primary factor impacting youth violence in Philadelphia is the lack of opportunity. And we’re talking about the lack of opportunity for young people to get a job that pays them a family-sustaining wage, lack of opportunity for young people to go to a school in which they feel seen, affirmed, loved, and they’re learning content that is relevant to what they want to pursue once they finish high school, a lack of recreational or after school programming available for youth, a lack of community resources like recreational centers, a lack of rapport and relationship and distrust with the police department.
How does your program specifically address the root causes of youth violence?
Our organization serves young people who’ve been pushed out of other school settings. Other folks refer to young people as being dropouts. We don’t use the word dropout because dropout puts the entire onus on the student, saying young people are pushed out recognizes that systems likely have not served them well.
Young people come to us for one calendar year. We help them obtain their high school diploma. We support them with earning a vocational certification in one of their tracks. We’ve got Greenville construction and advanced construction, a home health program, a health program, and then also a culinary program. And then for one-year post-graduation, we support our young people in being successfully connected to their post-secondary path, whether that’s a two-year, four-year trade school, or whether that’s going directly to the workforce.
So I talked about some of the factors for gun violence in the city, which is a lack of opportunity. I also think we have to recognize the systemic issues and challenges that our young people face. And so, for example, there are certain parts of North Philadelphia that are hotter than other parts of the city because there are large isolations of concrete and not enough trees. There are certain parts of the city where folks are more likely to have asthma because you’re sitting your house sits in close proximity to a bus depot.
So from the first second that a student walks into the door, we want to make sure that they feel loved, affirmed, valued, and seen, and so we literally clap for students, give students huge rounds of pause the first week of school and encourage them and celebrate them and tell them thank you for being here.
A lot of schools just jump right into the content like welcome day one, pick up your pencil. Answer question number four, we take the first week and a half of school to build relationships, to get to know one another. And so, we have about 35 different zip codes represented in our school community. We know that there are some neighborhoods in the city in which if you live in one neighborhood, you don’t talk to another neighborhood, you don’t live in the other neighborhood. And so, schools all across the city, you have folks who are from different neighborhoods, and you just get to work. Well, it’s kind of hard to get to work if you haven’t torn down some of those barriers, and you and you begin to build relationships.
Can you describe any recent trends or changes in youth violence that you’ve observed?
I’m seeing a trend of young people who are all trying to figure out how to navigate balance, respond to trauma, vicarious trauma and sustained trauma throughout their lives. I’m seeing trends with young people as it relates to various mental health issues. I see trends with young people as it relates to their use of technology and where they’re receiving information and the validity of that information. And I’ll also tell you, I’ll tell you, on a positive side, positive trends.
When you look at the population and the demographic of young people that we serve at Youth Build based off of some of those programmatic elements that I just talked to you about, we’re seeing a higher persistence rate in terms of young people who are coming to school and receiving their diploma, we’re seeing a higher daily attendance from young people.
What specific strategies or interventions does your program use to engage at-risk youth?
Therapy, specifically cognitive behavioral therapy, and making sure that young people have access to mental health conditions is very important as a part of our initiative. When I was at (Simon Gratz) and so to put some context to it, we have got a team of school social workers. We also have a school psychologist and then a contractor school psychologist.
The amount of mental health support that we have for a 275 young person school is the same level of mental health support youth build that I had when I was at Gratz, and we had almost 1200 students. And so mental health support is very important. There are some components there as it relates to making sure that young people have trusted adults, trusted mentors.
How do you measure the success or impact of your program on reducing youth violence?
For me, and what I’m about to say may be seen as a very dark thing from some people, but for me, one of my major successes in the impact of this program last year was the fact that I did not lose any students to gun violence last year, and unfortunately, I have not been able to say that for a while as my time as an educator in Philadelphia. And so that was a very profound moment for me, but I see success in many different ways.
I can talk to you about the success stories of former students who have gone on to join the union and are working livable wage jobs to support their family and former students who got off to become police officers. I think there are success stories all around and I think there are the success stories that I can talk to you about, in which we got a student architectural school who’s in Rome, but there’s also success stories where I can tell you it may not be celebrated as much, but to see countless students who came into our program who are in very unstable environments.
They might have been housing insecure. They didn’t have a way to put their food on the table, but now they’re working a stable job, they have a home to live in, and they know how they’re going to put food on the table in a way that’s not safe, that doesn’t put their family in harm’s way. That’s also a success story for me.
What does it take from an organization to be a home away from home for a kid?
The first thing I would say is consistency, and the second thing I would say is a loving community, and so programs need to be consistently open and available to students during the critical hours. And the critical hours are from 3-9 pm when young people don’t have a place to go, or they feel seen, affirmed, and loved, they then have to look for other opportunities, that’s when young people find themselves on the streets, on the corners, that’s when young people find themselves engaging in activities that we wouldn’t want them to engage in.
But when young people have opportunities and places and spaces to go where they can be themselves, discover themselves, take risk and opportunities and structured settings. Explore new areas of the city, explore new things about themselves. Build connections with other students and other communities across the city. When young people can go somewhere and get support, finding a job, get help building a resume, get help having their basic human needs be met, then I really, truly think we can have a generation and the population of young people in the city of Philadelphia who are driving.
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