Exalt Youth (exalt)

An Elevate Prize and grant award would significantly advance exalt’s model forward to deepen our impact. Building upon our tested incubation period at the Blue Ridge Foundation in 2006 and Gold Star evaluation by John Jay Research and Evaluation Center in 2013, our model has successfully scaled as an evidence-based program to serve 780 youth annually. It costs $236,000 a year to incarcerate a young person versus $10,000 a year for exalt to provide services to a young person with excellent results. This grant will strengthen our services to more youth and enable exalt to access additional resources and funding to increase exalt’s visibility and bring our work to the forefront so that our youth have a fairer chance to thrive. As recently highlighted by Robin Hood Foundation, the Latinx population comprises 18% of the U.S. population, yet only 1% of philanthropic dollars are directly invested in Latinx-focused organizations. As one of the few Latinas leading work of this kind in NYC, I was honored to be invited to join the Robin Hood’s Power Fund to lead transformational work and break barriers. An Elevate Prize grant will further fortify exalt’s work and visibility.

I have worked in the NYC criminal justice space serving youth for over 20 years.  In the early 1990’s many youth were being incarcerated because of poverty issues and punitive laws that criminalized Black/Brown communities with sentences causing more harm, devastating impoverished communities by fueling the school to prison pipeline - disrupting families and facilitating more impoverishment. Today as Executive Director at exalt, I  am dedicated to reforming our justice system for youth. 

We have witnessed historic opportunities in New York to improve our justice system, such as Raise the Age. But NYC is complex, and these initiatives will take time to see long-term impact. In our work, our youth are still disproportionately impacted by the justice system. In 2016, over 1million teenagers were arrested in NYC. Being court-involved jeopardizes youth access to educational/career opportunities, compromising their futures and families. 

In NY State, court-involved youth have a 60% chance of recidivating within 2 years. At exalt, 95% of our youth do NOT recidivate. exalt tackles these issues: we help youth reduce/vacate their sentences, progress academically, and gain employment through our internship programming. By keeping our youth safe and thriving, we keep NYC safe and thriving.

With the over criminalization of Black and Brown youth, coupled with the fact that employment rates for 16, 17, and 18-year-olds have dropped to about half of what they were a decade ago--New York City needs to continue its work to better serve all youth.  At exalt, we utilize our well-tested program model serving NYC’s high-risk court-involved youth ages 15-19 who face the most stubborn challenges to employment. We provide paid internships, professional development, and career mentoring as a viable pathway to skilled employment in high growth sectors. Designed to address criminal justice avoidance, educational attainment and employability; we have helped NYC address these challenges with our thriving, proven model, which increases school engagement (with 92% of alumni graduating high school vs. 67% of prison inmates being high school dropouts) and reduces recidivism (with a 5% recidivism rate vs. the 40% state average). The plan is to give every court-involved youth an internship in various fields: arts; law/civic engagement; small businesses/entrepreneurship; educational institutions; museums; tutoring/cultural centers; environmentalism; government; medical/health; culinary; media; philanthropy; social work -- to create substantial internships that leads to living wage jobs and aggressively invest in low income communities. 

Our ground-breaking model is implemented through 4 components:

1. Teaching four core foundational life skills - critical thinking, communication, creative problem-solving, and resource management - through pre/post internship classes.

2. Individualized planning, advocacy and support - integrating individual program plans (IPPs) and effective court advocacy strategies.

3. Paid internships for exposure to diverse career opportunities through our growing base of internship partnerships throughout NYC.

4. Alumni network of graduate programming consisting of post-graduate extended internships, individual education/career counseling, and monthly career workshops.

Our model demonstrates authentic success: less than 8% of students recidivate; 90% stay engaged in school; and 100% are matched with paid internships. 

This project is innovative because it scales a successful, tested model committed to racial equity for court-involved youth, using a court-advocacy approach that can reduce/ vacate their sentence. Led by people of color, exalt’s entire model is designed through a racial justice lens. Contextualized and highly structured, our curriculum emphasizes students’ active participation in their education and worldview. Our model is often the first time where our students are valued, allowing them to gain valuable paid internship experiences toward their long-term goals.  This project will saturate NYC and position exalt for greater geographic expansion and impact in subsequent years.

In FY2019, exalt launched a 3-year strategic scaling plan to enable more court-involved youth access to workforce development and educational re-engagement, while investing in our staff team, diversifying our board, and strengthening our financial sustainability. As we finish our third/final year of scaling, markers of achievement include: 

• New Headquarters with a new and larger space in Lower Manhattan and increased staff capacity to serve more youth with our model.

• Received Endorsement  by the Governor in NYC’s Raise the Age policy implementation, by NYU-Steinhardt as the 2019 internship partner of the year and by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice through a new 2-year funding contract.

• Executed a Strong COVID Response that included converting our proven model to a virtual experience and serving 834 youth with increased stipends, technology access and 100% internship engagement.

exalt continues to be one of the few organizations positioned to serve justice system-involved youth with demonstrated results. Our program has positive impacts on youth that can change their trajectory towards education and employment opportunities. exalt’s work supports the goal of NYC and that of our country to create more equitable systems for our young people.