Our Mission

We partner with schools and communities to serve youth today, to ensure tomorrow’s success. Our mission is to engage and empower youth so that they can be active participants in their environment. We strive to help young people develop a strong sense of self, emotional awareness, self regulatory skills, and the resiliency needed to build successful lives.

Our Approach

According to the SEL framework, individual competencies along with a positive learning environment help to prevent or reduce students’ negative behaviors, such as aggression (Eccles & Roeser, 2011).

YEP goes a step beyond, taking a three-legged-stool approach. Our focus is not only on the young person and their learning environment: we integrate the young person’s natural supports as well.

In order to build a solid foundation for young people to thrive, attention and focus must be given to all three legs of the stool. In order to do this effectively, we use the following values to guide our work:

Creativity: Consciously create a nurturing, caring, and safe environment for students.
Integration: Whenever possible, incorporate SEL skill-building into academic instruction.
Communication: Communicate early and often about SEL with all stakeholders.
Instruction: Provide explicit guidance and instruction in SEL skills.
Empowerment: Empower students to take charge of their own social and emotional learning. (McGraw-Hill Education, 2017)