Age Group: Older youth, particularly those at-risk for dropping out or who have been involved in the juvenile justice system in the South Metro Atlanta region.
 
Contact: Deborah Swank, co-founder and director
 
Website: www.heartstonourishhope.org 
           
Program Description:
Hearts to Nourish Hope is a Clayton County-based non-profit agency in place to meet the needs of older youth, particularly those who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out, or who are involved in the juvenile justice system in the South Metro Atlanta region. According to co-founder and director Deborah Swank, the agency’s youth programs focus not only on academics, but also on career and life skills that enable students to get jobs and become active, contributing members of society—and keep them out of trouble.
 
Hearts operates several programs throughout the year. A GED-prep program targets youth who have been expelled from or dropped out of school. An “evening reporting center” serves youth who are in the juvenile justice system. They come to the program under a conditional release—if they attend, they avoid being incarcerated. If students are suspended from school, they can come to Heart’s suspension center, complete their school assignments and participate in center programming, and still work toward their high school diploma. Swank explains that all programs offered by Hearts are intertwined: a student, for example, who is required to attend the evening reporting center might also be suspended from school and therefore visiting the suspension center. If that student drops out, he may join the GED-prep program.
 
Hearts also runs several summer programs that prepare older youth for the workplace. One, offered in partnership with the Atlanta Regional Commission, places 70 young people in apprenticeships throughout the county during the summer months. A new addition to the Hearts agenda is a summer program run in collaboration with Clayton County Public Schools that helps students channel their artistic talents into the creation of media-related, dramatic or artistic productions.
 
According to Swank, it is essential that all students enrolled in Hearts programs learn life skills that help them succeed. “Most of the young people that come to us don’t learn by sitting in the classroom,” she explains. “We try to teach them how to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the real world.” Youth who attend the suspension center, for example, help operate a food pantry serving more than 300 families each month at the center. This gives students a chance to operate a simple business in a controlled environment. Swank says this hands-on work experience is invaluable. “It gives youth a chance to make mistakes and learn from them so that when they do reach the real working world, they will make fewer of them there.”
 
For more information about Hearts to Nourish Hope and its programs, visit www.heartstonourishhope.org.