About Us

Aspiring Youth® is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with programs preparing at-risk youth for success in school and in life.


The Aspiring Youth After-School Programs has been working with at-risk youth for more than a decade.

Students do not stop learning when the bell rings at the end of the schoolday -- they just change teachers. Aspiring Youth® provides positive activities and mentoring relationships during the laatch-key hours after school when youth are especially vulnerable.

Aspiring Youth's® mission is to prepare at-risk youth for success in school and in life. To fulfill our mission, Aspiring Youth® operates the Aspiring Youth® After-School Program, Take A Student To your Employment (TASTE) Program, College for a Day Program and produces the "Positive Youth Development" and "Success Stories" TV shows.

Aspiring Youth® focuses on the middle school years when children are transforming from childhood to adolescence. The choices made during the pre-teen years are the foundation for each student´s future success.


PRINCIPLES OF ASPIRING YOUTH®

1. Aspiring Youth´s mission is to prepare at-risk youth for success in school and in life.

2. Aspiring Youth believes that a helping hand at the right time can make a positive and profound difference over a lifetime.

3. Aspiring Youth is a good steward of the volunteer and financial support that it receives and uses these resources in as effective and efficient manner as possible to achieve its mission.

The view of a former at-risk youth:

"I wonder sometimes, ‘Why am I alive?  What is my purpose?'  . . . I know that you don't want to hear about the pain and suffering that go on in ‘that' part of the city . . . But little do you know that ‘that' part of the city is your part of the city too. 

This is our neighborhood, this is our city, and this is our America.  And we must somehow find a way to help one another . . . I believe in my heart that somehow, someway, we can make this happen. 

Not by myself.  Not by yourself.  I'm talking about all of us as one, living together in our America.

Peace,

-LeAlan Jones, Visionary for TASTE Program & Aspiring Youth® National Advisory Council Member