Building Strong Leaders For The Future

Since 2012, The Lashawntay T. Howard Adolescents Offender Center (LTHYOC) has empowered youth by giving them a voice and providing a comprehensive youth development program that educates, trains, advocates, offers other supportive services and helps with youth crime prevention. The community-based non-profit LTHYOC inspires, educates, and empowers almost 100 adolescents in Miami Dade County (MDC), targeting communities in Liberty City, Little Haiti, Brownsville, and Overtown. In addition, we help youth with academic enrichment, career readiness, mentoring, life skills, school services, mental health referrals, social services support, and food insecurity.

Our comprehensive after-school, summer camp, and community-based educational enrichment programs support 6-12th graders. Our programs encourage student expression, decision-making, and leadership through ample chances. Our organization's capacity is augmented by access to resources that enable us to empower adolescents through structured activities such as life skills, entrepreneurship, job development, financial literacy, and STEM while providing wrap - around services such as counseling and mentorship.  We aim to stop gun violence within young people and our communities and this requires a secure place to heal and process their traumatic experiences and the numerous underlying causes that lead to violence and hostility. 

Our (SIY) program uses proven, research-based interventions to address personal, family, and community issues contributing to juvenile delinquency, gun violence, and gang activity. Establishing core relationships and promoting equity using Search Institute practices and evidence-based methods. Building healthy developmental relationships with youth provides benefits beyond the relationship itself. We know that youth with solid developmental relationships benefit in their learning and development, so we created the Intentional Relationships Workshop, which provides the following:

 • Increased academic motivation; 

• Increased social-emotional growth and learning (self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and self-awareness);

• Increased sense of personal responsibility; and 

• Reduced engagement in a variety of risky behaviors. 

The Purpose of the LTHYOC plan is to expand the current and youth violence prevention goals of The Safer Communities Program (SCP) to deliver multi-forms of violence prevention approaches to ensure positive development and enhance the lives of adolescents and young adults exposed to violence in their homes, schools, and communities. 

**Please help us raise $10,000 so that we may continue operating untill the ending of 2023. We appreciate any and all donations that supports our orginzation and cause.**