The mission of YouthBuild USA is to unleash the intelligence and positive energy of low-income youth to rebuild their communities and their lives.
Key takeaways:
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Consider having a how-to manual and constant training in your organization. Youth Building learned this the hard way; they realized their lack of training and technical assistance, coupled with the fact that there was no handbook or prototype from which the organizations could learn, led the government to cut their funding benefiting five of their programs. Once the organization wrote a handbook, the model was easily replicable and expandable around the nation.
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Consultants may recommend you to treat your organization as a business when talking about competition. However, when you treat your “competition” as your collaborators greater things can happen. YouthBuild’s leader believed that their success was due to persistency and coalition.
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Be ready to form new relationships. Between 1994 and 2002 the leaders at YouthBuild had to form strong relationships with different directors, secretaries, chiefs, staff and individuals due to their regular turnover. Some individuals were committed to the organization while other had different priorities.