Programs

"A lot of programs have come and gone from west Fresno and a lot has been promised and not delivered by outside agencies. They leave because of funding. We are left looking at them in their rear view mirror. We can’t leave; these are our kids and our streets."
Brian King
CEO, Fresno Street Saints

Mentoring

Fresno Street Saints matches at risk youth from the community with qualified mentors who also reside in the community. Matches made within the community allow the residents to witness each other helping their community and it insulates the relationships from funding reductions. Youth in southwest Fresno have experienced plenty of broken relationships. Their mentoring relationship doesn’t need to be another one.

Goal: To grow the mentoring program for at- risk kids from 32 to 60 matches this year.

Graffiti Clean Up/Job Readiness

Under a contract with the City of Fresno’s Quality Neighborhood Initiative, Fresno Street Saints works with at-risk youth between the ages of 16 to 21 each week providing them with job training and mentoring on the graffiti clean up work crew. In one year the Fresno Street Saints have worked with over 120 youth and clocked over 1,700 hours of volunteer time.

Goal: To increase the volunteer time for at-risk youth in the supervised graffiti clean up program, from 1,700 hours to 3,200 hours.

Education

The Fresno Street Saints run an after school program 5 days a week at Bigby Villa, one of southwest Fresno's largest low income apartment complexes and home to the Villa Posse gang. Each day 20 to 35 children arrive from pre-K through high school. They work on homework and enrichment programs. Two days a week a pre-school age literacy program is held in the mornings from 9 to 10:30 in partnership with READ Fresno. To create opportunity for these youth, Fresno Street Saints recruited 35 children to SES tutors in partnership with Reading and Beyond.

During the summer months, a Youth Leadership program is held at Bigby Villa from 8:30 to 2:30 and includes both breakfast and lunch. This past summer the California Food Policy Advocates (www.cfpa.net) rated the breakfast feeding program #1 in the state. When asked why Fresno Street Saints program was so successful, feeding over 70 children consistently per day with wrap around programs, CEO Brian King responded "because we taught the community how to feed themselves".

Goal: Grow the after school program to include Martin Luther King apartment complex and grow 3 new pre-school literacy programs in other locations throughout southwest Fresno. Increase the number of youth recruited to SES tutors to 100.

Grief Share/Trauma Support

In partnership with Northwest Church, Fresno Street Saints trained up 7 Grief Share counselors to conduct small groups in southwest Fresno. In a community where more than 30% of the city's murders occur, Grief Share provides the opportunity for peer leadership to minister to each other at a critical time and work with them to process their grief and assimilate back into their life in a healthy way.

Goal: To increase the number of Grief Share counselors from 7 to 15 and grow the number of Grief Share programs to 3 this next year with an average of 15 people in each group.