Homeboy Industries

A LETTER FROM FATHER GREG:

I recently said mass at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, and noticed a Homeboy Kevin walk into the chapel, flowers in hand. After mass I approached him, kneeling at the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and asked what brought him to church.

“G, I am so grateful for all the blessings in my life.” He said. “There are so many amazing things happening that I could never have imagined. I had to say thank you.”

Kevin has been at Homeboy Industries for over a year. He is finishing an internship at Bouchon Bistro restaurant, and embarking on a legitimate career path for the first time in his life.

Jeanette is working full-time at Olympia Medical Center, Huang is running his own hot dog stand, Valerie is graduating from East L.A. College, and Ronald is installing solar panels for Phat Energy.

Each of these recent trainee graduates has made their way to Homeboy Industries, arriving with a lethal absence of hope that led them to gang life and criminal activity.

At Homeboy they worked day in and day out to learn job skills. They connected to others as workers and friends, fathers and mothers. They re-identified who they are in the world, and they developed resilience.

In moving beyond Homeboy, the world will throw at them what it will, but this time it won't topple them or land them back in jail. They are renewed people.

For 25 years Homeboy Industries has engaged deeply with people on the margins, providing transformational tools in the form of job training, mental health services, substance abuse counseling, parenting and anger management classes, tattoo removal, legal services, kinship and community.

We’ve grown from an organization serving a few hundred gang members and previously incarcerated men and women each year to one that now serves more than 1,000 of them each month.

Your support makes this work possible.

When you give to Homeboy Industries, you put your beliefs into action: a belief in redemption, rehabilitation, and second chances; a belief that we all belong to each other.

Homeboy holds out hope to 120,000 gang members and other incarcerated men and women across Los Angeles.

But last month, as 91 folks showed up for our employment lottery, we could only bring in 6 to our job training program.

We need your help to widen the circle of compassion so no one is left out.

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Homeboy Industries traces its roots to “Jobs For A Future” (JFF), a program created in 1988 by Father Gregory Boyle while he was serving as pastor of Dolores Mission parish in Boyle Heights.

Begun as a jobs program in 1988, offering alternatives to gang violence in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, the program soon grew beyond the parish. With the addition of a small bakery in a run-down warehouse across the street from Dolores Mission, JFF had its own business, one where it could hire the most challenging, difficult to place young people in a safe environment. The hope was that they could learn both concrete and soft job skills, to make them stronger, better prepared candidates for permanent employment. A tortilla stand in Grand Central Market downtown solidified the evolution of JFF into Homeboy Industries.

In only a few years, Homeboy Industries has had an important impact on the Los Angeles gang problem, with young people from over half of the region’s 1,100 known gangs seeking a way out through Homeboy. Thousands of young people have walked through the doors of Homeboy Industries looking for a second chance, and finding community. Gang affiliations are left outside as these young people work together, side by side, learning the mutual respect that comes from shared tasks and challenges.Homeboy became an independent nonprofit in August of 2001, and has since grown into a national model.

Homeboy serves as a beacon of hope and opportunity for those seeking to leave gang life, for whom the barriers and challenges are great, and for whom there is virtually no other avenue to enter the mainstream. Source: www.homeboy-industries.org