Youth Opportunity Baltimore

Youth Opportunity (YO!) Baltimore provides support services for youth and young adults to achieve their academic and career goals. At two YO! Centers, caring adults provide literacy and GED classes, career training, health education, and many other support services that prepare young people for successful careers. YO! Baltimore also sponsors FUTURES Works, a collaboration with the United States Department of Labor and Baltimore City Public Schools to help students improve academic performance, and After School Matters, an after-school work-training internship program. YO! Baltimore runs an alternative high school, Youth Opportunity Academy. Additionally, youth who have demonstrated anti-social or deviant behavior participate in Pre-Adjudication Coordination and Training (PACT) as an alternative to being sentenced to juvenile detention.

YO! Baltimore helps young people, previously disconnected from traditional learning environments, to increase their wage earnings and education credentials.

Compared to non-participants, YO! Baltimore members earn 35% more, are employed at a 42% higher rate, are one third less likely to be arrested and convicted, and are half as likely to drop out of school. Female participants are 25% less likely to become pregnant and give birth.