Youth Opportunity Area, commonly known as "YOA", was a City of Boston youth program from 1997 to 2000, serving 16 to 24 year-olds in Roxbury's Orchard Park housing development and Dudley Street corridor; and South Boston's 3 public housing developments. Funded by the US Department of Labor (DOL) for 3 years at $2 million/year, Boston's mandate was to significantly reduce the unemployment rate for out-of-school youth in the target area. As such, the majority of the program's 950+ participants were high school dropouts; including youth offenders, gang-involved, substance abusers, teen parents, and other high-risk factors.
Boston had previously applied - unsuccessfully - for these DOL funds with a "school-to-career" model, based on a partnership between the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Private Industry Council. The School-to-Career system, of which Boston was a national pioneer, had been very successful since the 1980's in bringing public school students into the workforce, but had little impact on the youth violence that led to Boston's murder rate peak of 151 in 1991. This was no surprise, given that most youthful offenders and victims had low school attendance rates and little connection to traditional youth providers.
However, in late 1996, an ad-hoc working group of law enforcement officials and high-risk youth providers emerged, known as the "Boston Jobs Project" and led by US Attorney (for Massachusetts) Donald Stern. City, church-based and community-based Streetworkers had been working closely with law enforcement in "Operation Cease-Fire", in which known gangs had a direct dialogue with these leaders and were given a choice of prosecution or reform.
While recognizing the great success of "Cease-Fire" in plummeting gun violence, the civilian and clergy leaders felt that the coalition was too much "guns" and not enough "butter" - the alternatives to gangs, guns and jail had to be real. Many gang members, like the "Vamp Hill Kings" mentored by Streetworker Chops Porter, were saying, "I hear the message loud and clear. I'm ready to change. Tell me what to do next." To their credit, law enforcement leaders like Stern, Police Commissioner Paul Evans, state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, and others, soon began concerted advocacy for "jobs" as a critical tool in sustaining Boston's "Miracle" in reducing youth violence, and the Jobs Project was born.
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"Corey Sinkler was a child of this violent culture. A few years ago he
was in federal prison for armed robbery and selling guns. Now he's paid
by the Mayor of Boston, to keep kids from getting into the kind of
trouble that landed him in prison. So Corey's office is out on the
street, Intervale Street in Dorchester."
Filmed in 1996 and aired on PBS in 1997, "
The series not only profiled the more well-known names and leaders, such as Dorchester Probation's Billy Stewart, Reverend Eugene Rivers, Boston Police Captain Dunford, and Dorchester Chief Justice Sydney Hanlon but also lesser-known but critcally-important individuals who "made it happen": gang unit detectives; Community Academy headmaster Brenda Love; School Police Lieutenant Mike Hennessey; Streetworkers Chops Porter, Corey Sinkler and Ernest Hughes, and others.
