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Together, we’re making a difference.
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[post_content] => Lori Kaplan – Executive Director, LAYC: Latin American Youth Center is a multi-service youth organization. There’s academic programming, along with many holistic services around health issues, housing, violence and gang prevention, and employment assistance.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: We heard about LAYC early on because it had a reputation for being one of the strongest youth development organizations in Washington, DC
Lori: Prior to VPP, the Youth Center had plans to go into Maryland underway for two years. It was very fortunate that the VPP plan came when it did. It gave us the opportunity to think it through and make it stronger. It is not so easy to replicate the youth center.
Carol: VPP’s investment approach was built on outcomes and a performance-to-milestones approach; but when we started, we found that none of the organizations we were looking to invest in really had that. But LAYC created a great opportunity for us to help design something and to see what was most important in terms of outcomes and measurements.
Isaac Castillo – Former Director of Learning and Evaluation, LAYC: VPP’s investment is what paid for the creation of my position at LAYC. What’s unique about VPP is that they don’t just “talk the talk” when it comes to outcomes and measurement. They put the resources behind it to make sure that the organization they’re partnering with can actually build the capacity to be able to do this stuff.
Carol: The goal was to not only measure LAYC’s performance, but provide Lori with the information she needed to determine whether the organization should scale, and which programs they should scale.
Isaac: I remember Lori turned to me during my second or third day and said, “I need to get a handle on the race and ethnic composition of all the youth that are accessing our 40 programs and then I need to learn where these youths live.” I was like, “Okay. This doesn’t sound too difficult,” but, in reality, I had to go to each and every one of those 40 different programs and they all had different ways of collecting the information. It literally took me two weeks to just meet with every program. But from that first chunk of data, I was able to tell Lori that 8% of LAYC youth are coming from zip codes or locations in Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties in Maryland. We should expand there because that would likely be where you would see successful expansion.
Lori: I saw major changes on the demographic horizon and knew that LAYC needed to change as well. Many of our youth and families were moving to suburban Maryland, while young people and families who originally settled in suburban Maryland were coming to the LAYC seeking support. These families were living there but coming to DC for services, and we knew that things were changing and we had to look at that.
Carol: VPP team members spent a lot of time at LAYC with Lori in the planning process and in implementation of the plan. Our connections with government officials and social sector leaders in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, and others in the field, allowed LAYC to meet the key players and speed along their process of expansion. We also focused a great deal on governance structure and the diversification of funding sources for the organization through introductions to like-minded philanthropists.
Lori: I think there were a lot of very honest and upfront conversation to really figure out what the relationship was and how the partnership would work. VPP was an investment partner. It really is a two-way conversation and not a traditional power-dominant, one-way conversation.
Carol: LAYC was part of our first portfolio of investments, but when we launched our new program, youthCONNECT, we brought them along as part of that network. The relationship has really become a longstanding one. Together, we’re putting a dent in the problems that these young people face and we want to get better, to serve them better.
Isaac: Throughout my career, I’ve come in contact with hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Even today, there are many nonprofits that don’t make measurement and evaluation a priority. They don’t elevate it to a level where it’s someone’s job. VPP is one of the few funders out there that is willing to put in the kind of resources necessary to make sure that this work happens in a sophisticated and sustainable way.
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[post_content] => PeerForward-NCR’s increased effectiveness has allowed the organization to grow from serving 400 to 2,838 students: a 609 percent increase in five years. The organization has established partnerships with seven key universities and twenty-seven schools in DC, Maryland, and Virginia (including three VPP investment partners), greatly expanding its impact on the Region’s talented low-income students.
[post_title] => PeerForward (formerly College Summit)
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[post_content] => Our Challenge
Many students are leaving high school not fully prepared for employment and college, while local businesses struggle to hire and retain qualified employees. The heart of the issue is that our youth need to reach their full potential and our businesses need to fill positions with talented and skilled employees.
Quick Facts
- According to a Job Opportunities Task Force Special Report, only one-quarter of young people (ages 16-19) in Prince George’s County are employed, compared to over one-third of young people statewide.
- In Prince George’s County, nearly one-quarter of high school students drop out and do not receive a diploma.
- According to the Center on Education and the Workforce, by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the economy will require postsecondary education training beyond high school.
Our Goal
By 2021, we anticipate that 2,775 students at Suitland, Oxon Hill, and High Point high schools will be career- and college-ready, with another 400 graduates in the pipeline every year thereafter.
The Power of Partnership
By working together—leveraging the resources of businesses, philanthropy, nonprofits, and government—our bold vision can be achieved. Preparing our youth to become the experienced talent needed for growing business opportunities in the County is a compelling investment—for our young people, the community and businesses. Collectively we can achieve far more than what any one of us can achieve on our own.
Our Funders
- VPP investors and donors of the Capital Kids Portfolio
- Prince George’s County Public School System
- The Peterson Family Foundation
- Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States
- The Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation
- The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
- Bank of America Private Bank
[post_title] => Ready for Work
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See Forever is a considerably stronger organization than it was in 2002, having transformed itself from an organization running a small charter school to a high-impact institution managing a multi-campus system. Its effectiveness and sustainability have increased substantially as well with the rebuilding of its two boards of directors and implementation of a system to measure results.
David Domenici sat down with Carol Thompson Cole to tell their story.
David Domenici – Co-Founder, See Forever Foundation: The idea was initially just a pizza delivery restaurant for kids coming out of the court system. We helped them learn basic operational business skills. Eventually, we started the school as an outgrowth of the belief that kids involved in the juvenile justice system deserved and needed really high-quality education and job training programs to help them find ways to be successful in high school and beyond.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: We were really taken by the commitment and the passion that David, James, and others had in addressing the issues faced by these young people. In many ways they were an entrepreneurial startup, but they wanted to build a high-performing organization. We thought VPP’s business-planning process and strategic assistance could help them grow in the ways they wanted.
David: I see VPP’s help in three main avenues. First they were just incredible in the way they helped us build our board, increase our fundraising efforts, and reach the broader community. Second, they allowed us to focus on internal capacity building. VPP funding helped us to create the framework for meeting needs across multiple campuses, which is what we still have today. And finally, VPP helped us expand our network to reach people and organizations that helped us raise money, save money, gain expertise, and ultimately serve our kids better.
Carol: Early on, we spent a lot of time helping them to develop their two boards: the board for the school, as well as the foundation. We focused on helping them build a strong senior management team and a development team, as well as their curriculum and programs. The goal was stability and moving towards sustainability. There were just 85 students when the investment started and, by the end, they had almost 300 kids.
David: In 2007, we responded to an opportunity to run the city’s long-term youth correctional facility, at the time called Oak Hill. We were awarded the contract and today it has become our academy called New Beginnings. I just don’t see how we would have been in a position to make that move if it hadn’t been for VPP. And today, New Beginnings is one of the best—if not the best—schools at a youth correctional facility in the country.
Carol: One of the proudest days for me was when they applied to take over the education program at New Beginnings and won. And now David is going around the country taking the lessons he’s learned and trying to improve these types of programs in other places.
David: The strategic planning process was very effective for us and we wound up with a good plan, which helped us bring a lot of the right people together to make it all happen. In some ways, it was amazing to look back five or six years later and realize how many of the pieces of the strategic plan we had actually hit.
Carol: When you look at where we started in the investment, where we were when it ended, and where they are today, it’s just amazing. They went from being a small startup charter school to being a high-impact organization on multiple campuses. Now these schools are widely recognized as models of education for changing the life trajectory of court-involved, incarcerated youth. It’s a tremendous testimony to David and his team.
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[post_content] => Child and Family Network Centers’ greater effectiveness led to a 73 percent increase in the number of children served, from 120 to 207, over four years and program expansion into two new neighborhoods. It greatly increased the impact of its programs by transitioning all remaining half-day programs to full-day, and adding health services and financial literacy programs. Child and Family Network Centers maintained and/or attained accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children at all locations. Their influence spread through the region. CFNC has been recognized as a model program by the Montgomery County Department of Human Services and the Maryland Department of Education. Their students’ average overall developmental growth far exceeded the national average, particularly for children whose first language was not English.
[post_title] => The Child & Family Network Centers
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[post_content] => The SEED Foundation made considerable progress in fully integrating the academic and student life programs at SEED Public Charter School (SPCS). The boards for the Foundation and the school have continued to work to align strategic priorities, increasing focus on the use of data to improve outcomes.
[post_title] => The SEED Foundation
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[post_content] => Eshauna Smith, Carol Thompson Cole and Grace Katabaruki tell the investment story.
Eshauna Smith – CEO, Urban Alliance: For us, the job is really the hook that brings the young people to us, and what we’re able to do is wrap around that job a number of very important supports, including everything from financial literacy, to college admission assistance, to life skills, to providing them with two caring adults during their senior year. All of those things combine to create this powerful intervention that really helps youth understand how to make a successful transition from high school into adulthood.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: Our first encounter with the organization was when they applied for our Social Innovation Fund award. As we went into our first year of the investment, they met milestones very quickly. We recognized that Urban Alliance had a strong team in the planning process and realized that we had an organization that could deliver on outcomes for youth.
Eshauna: Thought partnership is critical to quality leadership and the ability to be high-performing. When I came into the investment, it had already begun. As the new leader of Urban Alliance, I was excited about the opportunity to work closely with like-minded folks who want to have the kinds of conversations around delivering quality services, evaluating your impact correctly and fully, meeting young people where they are, the politics of it all, the burden of fundraising, the difficulty of leadership, the difficulty of being a leader of color and the difficulty of being a female leader. That is the part of VPP’s investment that you might not find in a proposal about collaboration or partnership.
Carol: When we looked at the growth of Urban Alliance, we also knew we had to build the internal capacity of the headquarters. So we invested in several new positions, and one was the president. That opportunity came through our investment. Eshauna had a year in the position to develop a relationship with the team and to understand the workings of the organization. We didn’t know what we were laying the groundwork for, but that was an important part of the successful transition of leadership.
Grace Katabaruki, Director of Investment Practice, VPP: Creating the president’s position also came from the insight that we gathered during the strategic planning process. We had to make that transition while making sure the programs continued to deliver on the outcomes. Being thoughtful with Urban Alliance’s leadership about what kind of capacity they would need to do those things simultaneously and excellently was a part of our contribution.
Eshauna: VPP played a hugely critical role in that because very rarely do you have a funder who wants to help build your staff capacity at the national level. It was great to be able to spend a year working through those kinds of things that are often hard for nonprofits to get a full-time employee to be able to spend time doing.
Carol: When we started the investment, Urban Alliance was already in Baltimore and were expanding into Chicago. We spent a lot of time in our due diligence trying to figure out whether they had capacity to take the next step into Northern Virginia. We had to do this while protecting the investment regionally. We started to see that the team was strong and ready to scale, so we started the dialog about helping them grow.
Eshauna: We accomplished a lot during this investment, but I would say the most phenomenal accomplishment has to be our expansion into Northern Virginia. We’ve come a long way. To see that we’re fully-functional in the region, there is a five-member team and we’ve met the goal we set to have at least 70 jobs there is amazing. Virginia opened us up to a new population of young people who are immigrants. We’ve pushed ourselves and enhanced our skills in working with these youth, which is another accomplishment. It’s a challenge that we are still trying to figure out, but we are very proud and happy to work on it.
Carol: Many nonprofits want to stay true to what they started out to be. We challenge our investment partners to make adjustments as they grow. Sometimes it happens, and other times it doesn’t. But the Urban Alliance team made adaptations while they moved forward. They were open to positive change, and we were there to help them along the way.
Grace: I remember conversations about how to preserve the culture as we do this rapid expansion. Looking at some other organizations that have experienced organizational change, the result isn’t always the same as the one Urban Alliance came to. Another piece of success was preserving that strong youth-development-focused culture.
Eshauna: That’s right. And our model is truly gold because of its comprehensiveness, but we are going to always work to tighten it up. We want to make sure that we are delivering the highest-quality programs and staying relevant as the landscape continues to shift.
This investment upped the ante on our ambitious goals. It significantly increased the number of young people we serve as well as our capacity and sophistication as an organization. We knew that if we had VPP’s stamp of approval, then we could get in the door with the Department of Education’s i3 grant. And we did. After being selected to receive $10 million from the federal government, we are confident that other doors will be open as well.
Carol: One of the other things that always impresses me about Urban Alliance and Eshauna’s leadership, is the culture around continuous improvement. You keep it going. You keep it moving, then you step back and assess what you’ve done. And I think that approach will sustain Urban Alliance over the long haul.
Eshauna: I believe the thing that attracted VPP to Urban Alliance initially was the strength of the entire team and the brilliance of the management team. So, VPP’s voice will always play in my mind as we grow asking, “How do you keep the team strong?”
Carol: We had completed strategic planning with a strong team and leader. The aspirations were there. The implementation plan was there. We helped by funding additional senior positions. The rest is history, so to speak.
Eshauna: One word that comes to mind that summarizes our investment experience with VPP is excellence. Striving for excellence for our young people means that we’re always striving for excellence in our delivery, in our relationships and with one another as a staff and a team. We’ve been conditioned to strive for excellence as reflected in our core values and our mission. That is what this partnership has meant to us.
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Year Up’s National Director of Alumni Relations, Ronda Harris Thompson, sat down with Carol Thompson Cole, VPP’s President and CEO, to tell their story.
Ronda Harris Thompson – National Director of Alumni Relations and Former Executive Director 2011-2015, Year Up – National Capital Region: I think we have some perceptions in our country about who is talented and where that talent comes from. Year Up is really helping to break down those perceptions by opening up a back door that allows people to get in who otherwise might not. Once they’re in the door, they can prove that they are just as talented if not, in some cases, better than folks that you would see coming from traditional pathways. Year Up connects these young people with skills training, mentoring, work experience, and job opportunities to realize their potential.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: Even before they came to the National Capitol Region, Year Up had a strong reputation for being one of the best nonprofits serving young people ages 18-24. When they arrived in the area, their former executive director, Tynesia Boyea Robinson, reached out to us and made a case for how difficult it is for people coming into the NCR to become connected. Since VPP is a connector, we realized that we could play a part in building and networking the strong program they had already created in this Region.
Ronda: I was around back then and one of the things that was really unique about VPP was how, even before investing, they did a very extensive due diligence process. We brought together national board members, local board members, and national staff members. We also brought in other community organizations in the local market that really understood what we were trying to do and the impact that Year Up was making. It was unlike anything I’d seen from an investor before.
Carol: On the VPP side, we were really impressed with the talent that they had in their local office. I think we were also impressed by the commitment that the organization had and how every member of that staff in some way was responsible for the young people being served and mentored. We saw a rigor, a focus, and a discipline in the organization.
Ronda: A lot of times, as a non-profit, you aren’t comfortable being vulnerable with your funders because you run the risk of them seeing your dirty laundry. VPP just had a very different approach. They wanted to see what was working well, but, more importantly, I think they were interested in what wasn’t working. That process allowed us to figure out the best possible investment for VPP and Year Up, to really get focused on what we wanted to do better in order to help us grow and flourish in this community.
Carol: One area that was particularly successful was in helping Year Up explore new internship avenues. We were really excited about the opportunity to open up the option for federal government jobs. Not only would this provide government jobs, but government contractors could potentially also follow the government’s lead by offering jobs as well. Thus making the amount of jobs available to these young people even bigger. We made the case that these are local young people and, if you get them in and they can have an opportunity to be promoted, you’ll have them as longer-term employees. That has proven to be the case.
Ronda: We can only serve as many young adults as there are internship opportunities. VPP’s investment allowed us to go through the process of getting on the GSA schedule to do business with federal government agencies. As a result of that, we had internships with NASA, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. It really opened up doors for us.
Carol: When you look across our investment in Year Up—in terms of building organizational capacity, diversifying funding, developing partnerships, and forming new models—there were a lot of innovations. We’ve helped Year Up demonstrate what young people can do if given the chance.
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youthCONNECT was supported by a $32 million dollar investment. The money was a combination of the federal government’s Social Innovation Fund, VPP investment capital, and matching funds from philanthropic institutions and businesses.
youthCONNECT would not be possible without the commitment of our match funders. They contributed $13 million to the total funds raised. Their support allowed us to dream big and get results. You can see the full list of match funders in Celebrating youthCONNECT: Innovating for Youth Success.
EVALUATION
VPP is very fortunate to have Child Trends committed as its evaluation advisor and consultant for youthCONNECT. Child Trends is the nation’s only nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy center that studies children at all stages of development.
By putting resources towards supporting quality evaluations, the Social Innovation Fund increased the evaluation capacity of VPP and all of the nonprofit organizations that made up youthCONNECT.
Through youthCONNECT, each nonprofit implemented rigorous evaluations of its programs. These evaluations are underway. Most results will be available in 2017. As they become available, we will list them here:
- Solutions for Youth: An Evaluation of the Latin American Youth Center’s Promotor Pathway Program
EVERYONE BROUGHT SOMETHING TO THE TABLE
youthCONNECT provided a mix of programs to help vulnerable youth transition from high school to successful adulthood. Each nonprofit contributed an innovative program to youthCONNECT:
College Summit – National Capital Region further grew its core services and evaluated and expanded its Launch model: a new curriculum based on developmentally appropriate activities and lessons targeted towards 9th through 11th graders. The investment allowed them to expand their college preparation and application program offerings to more than just 12th graders, thus treating all four years of high school as a launch pad to college.
KIPP DC wanted to serve more youth in the Region, and provide a model for other KIPP sites and schools that struggle to get their students across the college finish line. KIPP DC implemented and evaluated KIPP Through College, a program focused on comprehensive provisions to ensure that all KIPP alumni have the tools and support they need to succeed in college.
Latin American Youth Center expanded and evaluated Promotor Pathways, an intensive new case-management model for reconnecting youth. The youth served by Promotores include some of the District’s youth who are the most disconnected from educational or employment opportunities and face multiple barriers to success—including homelessness, lack of a high school diploma and involvement in the criminal justice system.
Urban Alliance created a model curriculum outreach program for high school and disconnected youth; formed a high-quality, experimental design study to confirm program objectives of high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates; grew the number of youth served by its high school internship program; and created an alumni services department.
Whitman-Walker Health (formerly Metro TeenAIDS) expanded the number of youth who receive effective sexual education in Washington, DC by providing a sexual education curriculum to 7th through 12th graders, and by building the capacity of school staff to teach sexual education in public charter schools.
Year Up – NCR created the Healthy Behaviors Initiative. It was made up of various health education and access services. This includes a life skills curriculum focusing on domestic violence, nutrition, legal resources and working well with those in authority.
FIVE NONPROFITS IN ONE PLACE ON A MISSION
Key to developing the youthCONNECT model is a belief that the network’s coordinated support of a single population of students will yield more than the individual contributions of each network partner. This concept was tested in the Latin American Youth Center Career Academy Public Charter School, where five network partners worked in partnership with the school to support students. The multiple network partner programs delivered services in a single location at the Latin American Youth Center Career Academy Public Charter School. This coordination not only demonstrates that nonprofit partners can adapt their programs for various populations and locations, but also proves they can work collaboratively in one place.
GREATER THAN THE SUM OF OUR PARTS
youthCONNECT is organized around a series of working groups that developed the shared vision for the youthCONNECT model.
Over the years, a total of six working groups, based on role and function, worked together to shape and support the initiative:
- Executive Directors
- Program Directors
- Evaluation Directors
- Communications Staff
- Chief Financial Officers
- Development Staff
The groups have evolved over time. It is now commonplace for the program and evaluation working groups to solve problems, share best practices, collaborate, and leverage each other’s expertise. A periodic community of practice gatherings open to all staff, and orchestrated by VPP, provides an opportunity for network partners to come together to learn and deepen network relationships.
Under the guidance of Child Trends, the Common Outcomes Framework (COF) was created by the evaluation working group and VPP. The COF functions as youthCONNECT’s logic model. We use it to evaluate the effectiveness of youthCONNECT through a common set of indicators, which all of the nonprofits within youthCONNECT track as they progress towards youthCONNECT’s goals:
- Attaining a post-secondary credential and/or employment
- Sustained healthy behaviors across all six nonprofits within youthCONNECT
In order to reach the goals of the youthCONNECT initiative, our nonprofit partners agreed to:
- Individually and collectively work toward a shared set of outcomes according to the metrics identified within the COF.
- Help to build an open environment that supports the sharing of information, data and best practices to solve problems and strengthen program design, program delivery, and performance evaluation.
- Leverage each other’s resources to ensure youth receive the support they need to become successful adults.
VPP’S ROLE IN YOUTHCONNECT
VPP provides the strategic assistance to strengthen and support youthCONNECT. Here is what we do:
- Big Picture Guidance – Work together to develop a strategic agenda
- Funding – Provide funding for the collaborative
- Advocacy – Identify opportunities to educate leaders on policies affecting youth
- Evaluation – Lead the development of shared outcomes against which the organizational partners’ activities are measured; Support data collection and assessment of each program’s performance
- Meeting Facilitation – Guide meetings towards group consensus and action
- Logistics – Support collaborative meetings by scheduling, setting agenda and capturing next steps
- Communications – Manage and coordinate external communications
- Research and Analysis – Support continuous learning by researching, aggregating and analyzing data to find trends and report back to organizational partners
LEARNING
VPP devotes considerable resources to share the lessons it has learned. We hope you find these resources useful to your work.
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[post_content] => Lori Kaplan – Executive Director, LAYC: Latin American Youth Center is a multi-service youth organization. There’s academic programming, along with many holistic services around health issues, housing, violence and gang prevention, and employment assistance.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: We heard about LAYC early on because it had a reputation for being one of the strongest youth development organizations in Washington, DC
Lori: Prior to VPP, the Youth Center had plans to go into Maryland underway for two years. It was very fortunate that the VPP plan came when it did. It gave us the opportunity to think it through and make it stronger. It is not so easy to replicate the youth center.
Carol: VPP’s investment approach was built on outcomes and a performance-to-milestones approach; but when we started, we found that none of the organizations we were looking to invest in really had that. But LAYC created a great opportunity for us to help design something and to see what was most important in terms of outcomes and measurements.
Isaac Castillo – Former Director of Learning and Evaluation, LAYC: VPP’s investment is what paid for the creation of my position at LAYC. What’s unique about VPP is that they don’t just “talk the talk” when it comes to outcomes and measurement. They put the resources behind it to make sure that the organization they’re partnering with can actually build the capacity to be able to do this stuff.
Carol: The goal was to not only measure LAYC’s performance, but provide Lori with the information she needed to determine whether the organization should scale, and which programs they should scale.
Isaac: I remember Lori turned to me during my second or third day and said, “I need to get a handle on the race and ethnic composition of all the youth that are accessing our 40 programs and then I need to learn where these youths live.” I was like, “Okay. This doesn’t sound too difficult,” but, in reality, I had to go to each and every one of those 40 different programs and they all had different ways of collecting the information. It literally took me two weeks to just meet with every program. But from that first chunk of data, I was able to tell Lori that 8% of LAYC youth are coming from zip codes or locations in Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties in Maryland. We should expand there because that would likely be where you would see successful expansion.
Lori: I saw major changes on the demographic horizon and knew that LAYC needed to change as well. Many of our youth and families were moving to suburban Maryland, while young people and families who originally settled in suburban Maryland were coming to the LAYC seeking support. These families were living there but coming to DC for services, and we knew that things were changing and we had to look at that.
Carol: VPP team members spent a lot of time at LAYC with Lori in the planning process and in implementation of the plan. Our connections with government officials and social sector leaders in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, and others in the field, allowed LAYC to meet the key players and speed along their process of expansion. We also focused a great deal on governance structure and the diversification of funding sources for the organization through introductions to like-minded philanthropists.
Lori: I think there were a lot of very honest and upfront conversation to really figure out what the relationship was and how the partnership would work. VPP was an investment partner. It really is a two-way conversation and not a traditional power-dominant, one-way conversation.
Carol: LAYC was part of our first portfolio of investments, but when we launched our new program, youthCONNECT, we brought them along as part of that network. The relationship has really become a longstanding one. Together, we’re putting a dent in the problems that these young people face and we want to get better, to serve them better.
Isaac: Throughout my career, I’ve come in contact with hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Even today, there are many nonprofits that don’t make measurement and evaluation a priority. They don’t elevate it to a level where it’s someone’s job. VPP is one of the few funders out there that is willing to put in the kind of resources necessary to make sure that this work happens in a sophisticated and sustainable way.
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*RECURSION*
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Latin American Youth Center
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