After 2 ½ years of shuttered doors, virtual programming, and canceled community events, the Franklin Fair was finally back and better than ever! Reviving this flagship event after all that time was no easy feat for our Mentoring Bigs; they drafted and sent out countless proposal letters, made dozens of cold calls, and faced setbacks and challenges in the months leading up to the day of this big community project. But thanks to their dogged determination and the incredible generosity of community partners, our Bigs came together on April 30th to organize one of the biggest Franklin Fairs in recent memory! Even more importantly, our Bigs were finally able to bring Franklin Gateway residents together to celebrate the diversity and resilience of their community.
This amazing tradition of our Bigs and Littles leading this day of community-building is made possible through the National Police Athletic League who funds our Marietta PAL/YELLS Mentoring Program. Just like us, National PAL prioritizes youth growing as change-makers as they give back through service projects. We also are truly blessed for local partners like Stablegold Hospitality, who became our signature sponsor for the Franklin Fair event. With that being said, let’s take a look back on some of the best highlights from the day…
The Big Day
The morning of the Franklin Fair brought with it clear skies and a brisk summer breeze, boding well for the action-packed day to come. With the event slated to kick off at 1pm, Mentoring Bigs and YELLS staff arrived early at the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex to set up the attractions and brief each other on what the day would look like. As community volunteers and local vendors began to trickle in and take their places, our Bigs began to feel the weight of this community project and what it would soon mean for this community.
“It was surreal,” said Daisy, one of the Mentoring Bigs this year who worked on the marketing for the Franklin Fair. “I didn’t expect it to happen, or for so many people to come to be honest but it was so cool to see it all come together on the day!”
Our Bigs all had their roles for the day– Jevyn, Tristan, and Malai were the designated Game Masters in charge of facilitating and refereeing the main tournament games. Ashanti and Alivia were responsible for holding down the Single Parent’s station, where they teamed up with The Hope Box to provide parents with free baby supplies like diapers, formula, cleaning products, and medicine, as well as connecting families with accessible community resources and social services. And then there was KaMya, who was the Franklin Fair MC for the day! With her mic in hand, KaMya was the official host of the Franklin Fair, welcoming guests, introducing the different performers, and keeping everyone on track throughout the day with updates to the event schedule. Shout-out to “Jessica It’s All Good” for bringing the DJ equipment and coaching KaMya to rock her role as MC! The rest of the Bigs and Littles took their places at their stations and prepared themselves for an exciting day of high-energy games and community service!
The doors to the Franklin Fair opened at 1pm and already people were arriving to the sound of music and the aroma of hot dogs filling the air. As people settled in, they had the chance to walk around and interact with the different community booths and play mini-games like limbo or four square. Eventually, MC KaMya introduced the first entertainment act of the day, a performance from the Marietta High School “Beta Phi” Step Team, led by Mentoring Big Malai! Beta Phi blew us all away with their energetic performance and synchronization, setting a high bar for the rest of the big events of the day.
Pie Eating Contest
Shortly after the hour mark, the first big tournament game of the day was set to begin– the pie eating contest! Contestants were given two minutes to eat as much pie as they could without using their hands, and people rushed to the field to snag a spot around the six contestants who were getting ready to chow down! A few of our Littles L-O-V-E pie and decided to compete, and they were joined by one of our Middles and even Sheriff Jameel Fraser from the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department! People cheered the contestants on as they shoved their faces into their pies, doing their best to inhale as much of the pastries as possible before time was up. When all was said and done, the winner of this year’s pie eating contest was one of our own Mentoring Littles, Williams!
There was plenty for people to do in between the main tournament games. The bouncy castle kept the kids entertained for hours, and community partners lined the field with their tables and offered a variety of services, supplies, and advice for members of the community. Our grill master was serving hot dogs all day which our Bigs handed out to anyone who asked. And whether it was soccer, limbo, basketball or cornhole, people had their pick of carnival-style games to play against their friends as everyone waited for the next big tournament game…
Potato Sack Race
Soon came time for the second big event of the day– the potato sack race! This hugely popular race brought contestants of all ages together to pair up and test their speed and agility against one another. Elementary schoolers versus high schoolers, police officers versus firefighters, we had many community members trying to edge out their competitors for a shot at first place. When all was said and done, the race really came down to a photo finish!
Water Balloon Toss
The last big tournament game of the afternoon was thewater balloon toss! This game challenged contestants to work together in pairs to throw as many water balloons from one side to the other without bursting any in the process. With each round contestants took a step back, and inevitably there were splash casualties, but most of the balloons safely made it to the other side! This game was great because anybody could get involved and play, making it an entertaining tournament for everyone. The winners of the first round went head-to-head in the final, with two members of the Beta Phi step team taking home the bragging rights.
When all was said and done, over 300 people attended the 2022 Franklin Fair! It was a beautiful day full of flourishing community connections and an overarching celebration of the Franklin Gateway community. Eventually, after a full day of building community connections and having fun, people slowly started clearing the sports complex and returning home. As the sun began to set on the Franklin Fair, there was a feeling in the air that something truly monumental happened that day, and that our Mentoring Bigs were at the heart and soul of it.
“This past Franklin fair was just so incredible after a couple of years of the pandemic really not allowing people not just to have the Franklin Fair, but to have people gathered together,” said Board member George O’Donnell who attended the fair. “And to have an event like Franklin Fair where the whole community was able to come together and have fun and do things together, it was just an amazing experience.”
We want to thank all of the sponsors and partners that supported the Franklin Fair. Without their help, the Franklin Fair would not have been as impactful to this community as it was. Big thank you to Marietta PAL, the City of Marietta, Stablegold Hospitality, the Marietta Police Department, Cobb Collaborative, Catholic Charities Atlanta, Amerigroup, Marietta Fire Department, Krispy Kreme, Grace Chapel Fellowship, and theFranklin Road Community Association.
We also want to thank all of our vendors and community partners who provided valuable resources, support, and advice to Franklin Gateway residents who attended the Franklin Fair. Thank you to Girls Inc., FRCA, “Jessica It’s All Good”, Secrete The Boss, Amerigroup, Cobb Collaborative, The Hope Box, CORE Georgia, Marietta City Schools, Lockheed Elementary, and former Mentoring Big Miguel Enriquez.
Wow, what a journey this past year has been! With yet another year under our belts, we want to take a look back on the past 12 months and show you what we’ve been up to! 2021 was a year with lots of challenges that tested our resilience as an organization, but it was also a year of immense growth and accomplishments. Like many other organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic has redefined how YELLS approaches its programs and services for the youth of Franklin Gateway. Many of our non-vital services (like these recurring newsletters) really took a hit as we had to channel our full attention towards operating our programs in a way that ensured the safety of our staff and students while still providing valuable educational experiences and community building opportunities for our youth. From virtual programming to safely reopening our doors, it has been quite the learning experience doing what we do during the pandemic! Now, as the sun sets on one year and rises on another, we feel empowered to take on 2022 with confidence and faith in our YELLS family and community partners, knowing that whatever happens, we will be okay. So with that in mind, let’s reflect on this past year and bring you up to speed!
Achieving Outcomes
Despite the challenges of virtual programming during the 2020-2021 school year, we achieved incredible outcomes for our youth and families! In total, YELLS served 108 youth and their families in 2021. Last May, YELLS youth had a 100% graduation rate with all 11 of our seniors graduating high school, plus 4 YELLS students who graduated a year early! Additionally:
96% of our youth were promoted on grade level
88% of youth improved by a letter grade or maintained a B or above in Math or ELA.
95% of YELLS parents rated their child’s self-esteem and confidence after participating in YELLS as “excellent” or “ good” (this represents an increase from only 54% on pre-surveys at the start of the year)
And it doesn’t stop there! Throughout the year, our YELLS Community Action Café high school teens participated in professional development workshops where they learned to write strong resumes, practiced interviewing skills, and developed networking and outreach techniques by engaging with partners to facilitate new programs to serve their community. All in all, the professional skills we taught them proved fruitful as 9 YELLS teens secured jobs!
YELLS was also successful in implementing new ways to support our youth once we did return to in-person programming. This past fall, our Volunteer Engagement Specialist, Ms. Amanda, introduced a new initiative to the YELLS Afterschool Program called Scholar Dollars! The Scholar Dollars program incentivizes our ASP kids to improve their academic enrichment by rewarding their extra effort with YELLS-branded “scholar dollars” that they can use to purchase a host of prizes and special experiences. Click here to learn more about how Scholar Dollars have gotten our students excited about reading, completing their homework, and taking on new assignments!
We are very proud of the outcomes we achieved this past year because it reflects the growth and success of the youth in our programs! It is also a reminder of the work still to be done to empower our young people to rise up as servant leaders in their community.
Making the Most of Virtual
All YELLS programs remained virtual during the 2020-2021 school year, with our team expertly navigating virtual programming to provide engaging workshops, emotional support and wellness, and daily individualized tutoring for our youth. There is a genuine concern that students in general are being negatively affected by the loss of in-person schooling, suffering academically, socially, and emotionally as a result. For this reason, it was imperative for us that we offered strategic and individualized instruction for our youth in order to offset the gaps from lost in-person schooling. Our virtual programs allowed our students to connect with their peers while also expanding their academic enrichment and creating content aimed at practicing social and emotional skills that may have been impacted during virtual learning.
We also strived to support our YELLS families directly during this difficult time. Our families received activity supply drop-offs to aid in their child’s virtual learning as well as book donations delivered right to their doorstep! We also connected families with resource referrals to meet their immediate needs and informed parents with tools and coping strategies to navigate the pandemic. Perhaps most impactfully, YELLS also raised funds to provide over $20,000 in rental assistance to families struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic! We felt truly blessed to be able to assist our families in this way, especially considering all of the love and support they have shown us in the past.
There was a lot to be proud of in the virtual space for our youth! We watched our ASP kids mature and find their voice as they gained skills in coding and debating, and learned to examine complex issues in our society. They also learned to adopt a growth mindset through interactive virtual activities like designing their own “I am Powerful” posters, turning negative statements into “I can” statements, learning about love languages, and practicing positive self-talk and affirmations.
ASP youth also studied the importance of civic engagement and voting when we all got together on Zoom to watch the Inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris. Our kids celebrated in style as they dressed up with pearls and American flags that we provided in their drop-off packages. Afterwards, they wrote their own presidential pledges and together analyzed Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem. It was beautiful to watch our youth speak with confidence while respecting their peers’ opinions as they applied what they learned to solve our nation’s problems and debate in what ways we have and have not achieved MLK’s dream.
Being in the virtual space challenged our Community Action Café teens to think outside the box and find creative ways to serve the community in the midst of a pandemic. Our CAC teens dream big, and together they came up with some amazing ideas for outdoor, socially-distanced events that would bring the community together safely. They learned to effectively navigate various mediums both as professionals and community leaders as they created digital fliers, sent professional emails, and advertised their events on social media. They also showed initiative when it came time to planning and organizing their resources on the day.
The first was a “Paint and Vibe” event that brought families together in the YELLS parking lot to have fun and paint some beautiful art! They also planned the “Parking Lot Cinema” outdoor movie night, where our families and youth enjoyed pizza and snacks while watching a movie together on a projector. These events were a lot of fun, and we were really proud of our teens for rising to the challenge and planning meaningful events for our families to come together safely!
Welcome Back to In- PersonSummer Camp!
After months of virtual programs, we were (finally!) preparing to open our doors for in-person summer camp! It had been over a year since YELLS had any students in the building, so we knew how important this six-week summer camp was going to be as we continued to reopen and understand our boundaries. Most importantly, we finally got to see our kids in person again!
Our summer camp began in June 2021 and ran for nine hours every day for six weeks, providing significant support to parents who rely on YELLS for childcare. Our Volunteer Engagement Specialist, Ms. Amanda, began with us that June and got to experience YELLS for the first time in that space. In reflecting on the summer, Ms. Amanda only had positive things to say about the in-person summer camp experience.
“I think it was really successful! It got us to see and think about what worked, and it also allowed us to prep the space for in-person learning because we were able to see what individual activities we could do, and have our protocols in line,” she said. “And a lot of the kids who came back after summer camp already had a strong idea about what the protocols looked like and were already in that mindset of being respectful of the space. It also prepared staff to see what worked, what didn’t work, how many supplies were needed and how to share and distribute different games to different pods.”
Every day our ASP kids launched into choice clubs, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) challenges, book clubs, and other literacy activities led by our staff. The rest of the day – thanks to a partnership with the City of Marietta – was spent at the sports complex fields where we all got to run around, play sports, and enjoy the sunshine!
For one of the choice clubs, our leadership instructor (and former YELLS youth) Ansleigh, led a music club for the kids where each week was dedicated to a different genre and they would listen to music and learn about the history of that particular genre! One week, Ansleigh took our kids through the history of rap and its origins, and as an exercise each child wrote their own rap verses, which they really enjoyed! Another choice club that we had was our French club, where one of our former AmeriCorps VISTAs taught our youth some French, led them in decorating croissants, and together they built models of the Eiffel Tower, further encouraging their engineering and art skills.
In past years during summer camp, YELLS would take a field trip every Friday to keep our kids moving and learning in different fun settings. Although we couldn’t travel anywhere because of COVID, we still wanted to provide our youth with fun alternative field trip experiences within Franklin Gateway. One of these in-house field trips was a petting zoo that we set up at the sports complex, and our kids had an absolute blast playing with bunnies, chickens, pigs, and goats! They got to hold and pet the animals while they learned all about them. This was one of the highlights of summer camp and it’s certainly something that we are looking to do again considering how much the kids loved it!
Our Café teens were also involved in summer camp! Every day they participated in an Art Fellowship Track and a Media Production Track, where they experimented with different artistic mediums, produced a short video, and even hosted their first podcast! These rotations were helpful in teaching our teens how to combine their artistic creativity with media production know-how to create exciting content across different platforms.
Of course, we did have to make some adjustments given the nature of operating during a pandemic. But being back in-person allowed us to go more in-depth than in our virtual programming to really fill those learning gaps and rebuild those social-emotional skills between youth and families. All in all, in-person summer camp was a huge success and really set the tone for what in-person programming would look like during the school year.
Connecting with the Community
When August rolled around, we were able to open up our programs again alongside the school schedule for the first time in over a year! It felt so good to finally be back together again, and even though we were masked up and socially distanced, we all knew this was how our programs were meant to be experienced. Reopening our doors also opened the possibility of connecting with the Franklin Gateway community in ways we weren’t able to do because we were virtual for so long.
The school year kicked off with a bang when the Franklin Road Community Association (FRCA) hosted their annual Back to School Bash to celebrate Franklin Gateway students returning to school! The focus of this drive-thru event at the sports complex was to give registered Franklin Gateway families backpacks filled with school supplies to ensure our youth have everything they need to thrive in the new school year. This was a great way to kick off the fall semester and it was a big help for the Franklin Gateway students that relied on these supplies to succeed academically!
More than anything, we were SO EXCITED to have our youth back with us in the building after-school each day this year! The fall was full of learning and growth, and our YELLS team has done an incredible job of developing dynamic activities that kept our youth gaining skills while staying safe during in-person programs. Check out some of our favorite activities:
That being said, those first few weeks back in person were not always smooth sailing. With one week to go before the Mentoring Program was set to begin, we were informed that their usual meeting space was no longer available to use, and it was imperative that our Bigs and Littles had a place to foster those mentoring relationships. Luckily, out of this challenge we created an important new partnership that has quickly become a staple of the Mentoring Program today. Laura connected with Mr. Richard Leon, Director of Sales and Marketing at The Radisson Hotel just down the street from YELLS, who generously offered for The Radisson to host the Mentoring Program, first until the end of the year, and then that offer was extended through the end of March 2022 at least! Click here to learn more about our partnership with The Radisson and Mr. Richard Leon, and we want to extend our deepest gratitude for how they have supported the Mentoring Program these past few months. We really couldn’t have done it without them!
Incredibly, The Radisson wasn’t the only new partner that we gained this fall. We also grew our partnership with Food Security for America (FSA) and added a new partner, Northside United Methodist Church (NUMC), to allow us to provide weekly produce to families at YELLS. FSA now offers access to fresh fruits and veggies, and the awesome volunteers at NUMC sort this fresh produce and deliver them to YELLS weekly for our Community Action Café teens to then distribute out to our families at dismissal. This came to be known as Produce Tuesday! This partnership also gave our teens the opportunity to practice skills that they would normally develop through serving customers in the Café by coordinating the deliveries and building relationships with families as they handed the produce to parents each week. The teens even created recipe cards so families could get creative with healthy ways to incorporate the different produce into their meals. All in all, Produce Tuesday has been a great way for YELLS to restore community connections between our Franklin Gateway families while providing them with fresh and healthy produce!
After a few weeks of providing fresh produce to our families, we noticed that we would always have a couple extra bags left over, and we wanted to find a way to give this produce away while still supporting Franklin Gateway residents. We learned that McCleskey-East Cobb Family YMCA organizes their own food drive at the Dwell Apartments across the street from YELLS every Wednesday, and so we partnered with them by donating our extra produce to their food drive! We are very proud of this partnership because it ensures that, even when we aren’t directly helping the families on Franklin Gateway, we can still support the people who are.
As fall rolled on, we continued to think about how we can organize different events that would bring the YELLS community together in a safe way. One such event was Trunk or Treat, which was spearheaded by our wonderful Bilingual Family Engagement Specialist, Christi Graham! This unique Halloween event brought out everyone’s creative side by decorating the trunks of their cars with spooky and exciting stations, from a haunted house to a portal to another dimension!
The pandemic has certainly affected how kids everywhere trick-or-treated, so it was a special moment watching our youth getting excited about Halloween as they walked around in their costumes interacting with the different stations. This event was a huge success and showed us all that we can still come together and have fun while also practicing safe protocols.
Our Community Action Café teens stayed engaged with weekly culinary workshops where they learned to prepare a variety of treats, from nachos to hot chocolate, while also pushing them to think about novel ways to serve their community. Although we couldn’t invite any community members up to the café to enjoy these treats because of our COVID protocols, our teens set up a hot chocolate bar during dismissal to serve to kids and families as they were being picked up. This was a fun way for our CAC teens to gain hands-on experience serving our community while keeping them warm during the cold evenings!
We entered the giving season knowing that there was so much to be thankful for! The Franklin Road Community Association hosted their annual Holidays Around The World Drive-Thru event at the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex, where so many Franklin Gateway families were blessed with presents donated and sorted by our community volunteers!
By the end of the year, we were especially fortunate to have so many (and we mean SO MANY!) gifts and toys donated for our kids from a bunch of different community partners! Special thanks to Marietta Police Athletic League, Home Depot Marietta Technology Center, Parkway One and Two, Bridging The Gap, United Way of Greater Atlanta, and Assurant (phew!) for each going out of their way to find out what our YELLS kids wanted for the holidays, and boy did they deliver on the gifts! Our kids were ecstatic to take home their presents, and it was a real highlight of ours to see so many partners show their love for YELLS like that. Thank you to everyone who donated to YELLS during the holiday season!
Looking Ahead to 2022
As we close the door on everything that we’ve accomplished in 2021, we face this new year with a lot to look forward to! Our Community Action Café teens will be flexing their marketing and culinary muscles as they work towards launching a mobile cafe for the Franklin Gateway community. Hopefully, community members will soon be able to enjoy tasty treats made by the teens that they can pick up outdoors in front of our YELLS building or in spots throughout the community!
This year, our Mentoring Program Bigs are finally taking the reins and are planning two incredible service projects for the Franklin Gateway community. The first is a single mothers event aimed at supporting single mothers in the community by connecting them with valuable community resources, as well as helping to build a network of mothers willing to support and uplift each other. We are beyond proud of our Bigs for having the awareness and empathy to think of the mothers of our community in this way. We see it as a direct reflection of the values and mentality that we aim to instill in our youth: empowering our youth to believe that they not only possess the skills, but hold the duty, to change their world!
The second event is the Franklin Fair! The Franklin Fair is an annual celebration of the community that sees Franklin Gateway residents come together to eat culturally diverse food from local restaurants and play fun carnival games! This community hasn’t seen a Franklin Fair since the spring of 2019, so for our Bigs and Littles to work hard to bring this event to life will symbolize a significant milestone for them, considering all that they’ve been through.
YELLS Bigs came up with these amazing projects after an extensive exploration of their community. They learned to conduct a community needs assessment where they identified strengths and areas for growth after reflecting on a community-wide scavenger hunt. They also explored a variety of causes by talking with community leaders and activists during our “Cause Tables” event to spark ideas for how they could create meaningful change on Franklin Gateway. Follow this link to learn more about the Mentoring Program journey over the past year and relish all the hard work they have put in!
This year has been a defining one for YELLS. The emergence of the Omicron variant stands as a stark reflection of the unpredictable and cyclical nature of this pandemic, but it also is a testament to our resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity. We will no doubt have some beautiful successes to celebrate this year, and we will also likely face some hardships. But whatever unforeseen obstacles we will encounter in 2022, we will overcome them the same way we have overcome all the others: together.
“YELLS helped me to grow in my communication skills, keeping eye contact, networking skills, and becoming more of a leader. It helped me to see that there is always a way around things. If there is a bad situation, there’s always a way to make it better. The YELLS values helped me to realize this, especially Professionalism, Going Above and Beyond, and of course Energy and Enthusiasm. It has helped my peers to grow too. A lot of my YELLS peers were childish at times, but now they are more focused and thinking about plans after high school.”
– Anyla Edwards (YELLS Community Action Cafe Graduate)
We’re so proud that our amazing YELLS graduate, Anyla, used her inner leadership and the lessons she learned at the Community Action Cafe to succeed both academically and personally! Anyla started attending the YELLS Community Action Cafe program during the 2017-2018 school year. She moved to Franklin Gateway from the Virgin Islands with her family during her Freshman year. Once enrolled in school she was told that she had only 4 transferable credits and was behind the rest of her peers. Thankfully, Anyla had an incredibly strong work ethic and was introduced to the Performance Learning Center(PLC) program at Marietta High School. The PLC program allows for students that are behind in their credits to work at their own pace through online classes. It is a good alternative for students that need to catch up, but it requires diligence and self discipline to succeed. Anyla made it her mission to catch up to the rest of her class and also maintain her good grades.
Staff remember Anyla’s first few visits to YELLS vividly. She was quiet at first and would come straight to the back of the room and sit down to start on her assignments, only talking to her closest friends. But the quiet Anyla that we were first introduced to, quickly came out of her shell. As she got more comfortable, we quickly learned who the real Anyla was. She became one of our fiercest student leaders, a student that was always willing to lead the group, jump on the mic, and always had an opinion to share. She had an infectious, fun, and sassy personality that was hard to miss. She took it upon herself to make sure that each student felt loved on their birthday, rallying all of the other students and staff in a planned celebration, complete with heartfelt cards and speeches.
While Anyla loved to have fun, she definitely prioritized her school assignments. She took her grades and schoolwork very seriously. She always started each day by making her daily rounds being sure to welcome each of the other YELLS students and staff, before checking out a computer to start on her work. Before long, Anyla not only caught up to her peers, but she surpassed them. We were so proud when she announced that she would be graduating December of 2019, an entire semester early! Her hard work paid off and she exceeded her goals!
Now an official YELLS graduate, and the current teen Operations Manager for the Cafe, Anyla has already begun giving back to her peers by inspiring them to succeed in their goals, and supporting staff in activities and events. She has also agreed to use her leadership skills to help us re-engage other YELLS alumni and continue to give back to the Franklin Gateway community. As Anyla reflected on her time at YELLS, she shared that her favorite part of YELLS is “how we are given the chance to come up with events or activities for the community, and how we are so involved in the community outside of YELLS.”
Anyla is currently working at Studio Movie Grill, sharing that the serving and customer service experience she gained as a Community Action Cafe student has helped her excel at her new job, receiving recognition from her employers even before she was fully trained in her new role. Anyla has future plans to pursue a degree in nursing and the YELLS staff couldn’t be more proud of all that she has accomplished. Congratulations, Anyla!
–
When we first came to America we were timid. When we came to YELLS my mentality changed… YELLS has helped me to keep my family together and organized. Taking care of kids by YELLS is wonderful!
Patience Ehehom, YELLS advocate since 2012
It makes you feel good to give back.
Devin
At [the Community Action Café] we get people who sacrifice so much for us, and that motivates us to help those around us.
Tori
YELLS has been a medium where I can actively change a life, and actively manipulate my own life to be what I want it to be.
Ana, YELLS Big
YELLS allowed me to see that all people have something to offer.
Imani, YELLS Big
Because we learn about the community [from community members] we are more knowledgeable about the needs of the community.
Tori
The kids don’t always talk about their day at school, but they always want to talk about their day at YELLS.
Tosha Freeman, Afterschool Program Parent
It’s all positive energy in here!
Devin, YELLS Graduate
The way people see you changes when you help them address a problem in the community.
Ashami
The kids out here [on Franklin Road] are all looking for a better future, and we help them find that better future.
