With belief in their potential, Youth With Faces helps adolescents involved in the criminal justice system build the skills needed to break the cycle of incarceration and create positive futures.
First launched in 2001 to provide clothing and meals to residents in Dallas County Juvenile Department’s (DCJD) Youth Village, Youth With Faces expanded its scope in 2008 to include career-readiness and culinary courses with paid work opportunities. These “Earn & Learn” opportunities included pop-up dinners in the community that eventually led to the formation of Café Momentum in 2015. That same year, the agency expanded programs to multiple Dallas County campuses. It changed its name from Youth Village Resources of Dallas to Youth With Faces to better reflect its purpose – giving young men and women in the juvenile justice system a second chance at being more than a faceless statistic. Youth With Faces expanded again in early 2022 when it launched services with Collin County Juvenile Probation Services (CCJPS). In 2023, the agency launched its first-ever community-based program, serving youth under community supervision (probation) in Collin County.
By giving justice-involved youth employable skills and a support network, Youth With Faces helps them visualize their capabilities and realize the unique gifts they can contribute to the community. Today, Youth With Faces serves more than 350 young people annually through career education and reentry programs, post-release services, and campus events at five campuses within Collin County Juvenile Probation Services and the Dallas County Juvenile Department. To date, Youth With Faces has served more than 2,800 justice-impacted youth.
All Youth With Faces programs incorporate three key tenets:
Character: Youth develop social skills and healthy approaches to addressing challenges, then put them to work in real-life situations, such as teamwork, decision-making and problem-solving.
Capabilities: Youth learn and practice skills they need to be self-sufficient, confident and contributing members of the community.
Connection: Youth work alongside adult role models who believe in them. This positive network of support includes mentors, employers, volunteers and educators. When working and learning with encouraging adults, students quickly begin to believe in themselves and make in-roads to productive pathways.
Some of our outcomes include:
Mission
Youth With Faces believes in the potential of justice-involved young people and helps them grow the skills needed to break the cycle of incarceration and create positive futures.
Vision
To build a future in which justice-involved youth receive opportunities to build character, connections and capabilities essential for their success.
According to a segment by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), on any given night, nearly 50,000 youth are incarcerated in facilities away from their home in the United States. In Texas alone, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) reported that 26,155 youths were arrested or referred to the department in 2021.
Youth of color are much more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile facilities. According to The Sentencing Project in 2019, the white placement rate in juvenile facilities was 72 per 100,000 youth under age 18. By comparison, Black youth were 4.4 times as likely to be incarcerated (315 per 100,000); Tribal youth were 3.2 times as likely (236 per 100,000); and Latinx youth were 27% more likely (92 per 100,000). Asian youth were the least likely to be held in juvenile facilities (19 per 100,000). Most young people in the system have endured more than one childhood trauma, such as poverty, neglect, abuse or addiction.
Once incarcerated, these young people may become faceless statistics – society’s invisible kids whose potential is neglected or forgotten. Youth With Faces has seen first-hand that justice-impacted youth have great capacity to contribute to society and seeks to lower their chances of re-entering the system after their release. When given opportunities to gain employable skills and a network of support, young people quickly visualize their capabilities and realize the unique gifts they can contribute to the community.
Your gift through North Texas Giving Day will help these young men and women build skills to overcome multiple barriers upon release so they can achieve their personal goals for success.
The advancement of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a priority at Youth With Faces, as 94 percent of participants are people of color. In 2020, 49 percent were African American and 45 percent were Latinx. These are not unique numbers for the local justice system, and reports from across the country show that youth of color are incarcerated at higher rates than their white peers. For Youth With Faces to truly provide the best support to young people impacted by the justice system, programs must intentionally focus on equity and inclusion, and every interaction with students must offer respect, accountability and belief in their potential.
To help with these efforts, Youth With Faces staff and board members participate in training and activities to strengthen equity and inclusion in all Youth With Faces operations. These trainings include the BoardLead DEI Nonprofit Learning Series, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Unconscious Bias Training, Communities Foundation of Texas’ DEI Training and more. Additionally, staff members have served on local DEI committees, and the agency’s strategic plan includes a goal for all staff and board members to participate in Racial, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion training annually. The strategic plan also includes a goal to add more diversity to the board of directors and develop a Community Advisory Board made up of program graduates and community members who have firsthand experiences with re-entry challenges and who can advise on programs to best serve students.
Youth With Faces programs also provide the opportunity for students to work with and learn from professionals who are also people of color. In addition to career education, Youth With Faces’ reentry support involves partnerships with other nonprofits in the community, helping youth overcome a number of barriers, including racial biases, as they return to their communities.
Organization name
Youth With Faces
other names
Youth Village Resources of Dallas, Inc.
Causes
Justice-involved adults or youth
Operating Budget
$500,000 - $999,999
Counties Served
Collin, Dallas
BIPOC Serving
Black or African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latinx, Native American
BIPOC Leadership
Board Chair
Equity Statement
Equity Statement
Address
6333 E. Mockingbird Lane Suite 147-872