South Holyoke Safe Neighborhood Initiative

Looking at statistics, we know that many of the youth in Holyoke are growing up in broken families.  Many don’t have their biological fathers living with them and many are raised in a single parent home by mothers that are struggling to make ends meet.

There are so many factors that impact the youth in Holyoke in so many negative ways including; gang membership, drug dealing and social emotional issues, due to the environment.

The Holyoke Safe Neighborhood Initiative is working at the grass root level to impact change in the neighborhoods to include reaching the youth through role modeling and mentorship, while using positive youth activities as a means to reach them.  In addition, we are working with various agencies to change the social and economic environment in Holyoke.

We know through studies that there is a great economical stain on our cities, state and government for even one youth going down the wrong roads and getting pulled into a high risk lifestyle.  One study estimated the lifetime cost of one person going down the wrong roads to be between $250,000 and two million dollars.  Looking at that statistic alone, working together we can make a substantial impact on our economy by reaching a high percentage of the estimated 1,500 youth that live in our target area in South Holyoke.

In November of 2012, we conducted a survey in South Holyoke and learned that 65% of the youth in South Holoke had never attended an after-school program.  Since that survey, we created seveal programs including table tennis clubs, boxing programs, basketball programs, flag football, volley and others.  After doing a second survey in October of 2013 we found that 63% of youth had now attended an after-school program.  See entire survey results at www.shsni.org.

Our focus is not only on youth, but reaching the families to educate them and direct them to resources available through some of our community partners.