A charity’s focus on addressing criminal justice inequities begins with lessons in responsibility, leadership, and self-respect | Philly Gives

The line stretched down the block — neighborhood folks stopping by YEAH Philly’s West Philadelphia headquarters to pick up free groceries on one of November’s last balmy Mondays.

Camron Scott, a regular, poked his head into the food distribution window.

“Here’s our worst customer,” joked Monet Seidle, 19, as Scott adamantly rejected asparagus, cucumbers, and fresh raspberries in favor of chicken and mac and cheese.

“I’m her best customer,” Scott laughed as the two traded trash talk.

At YEAH (Youth Empowerment for Advancement Hangout), neighbors get raspberries and chicken, but the young people distributing the food also benefit, gaining a paycheck, responsibility, leadership, and most important, self-respect.

Based in a rowhouse at 52nd Street and Walton Avenue, YEAH Philly runs programs for and by West and Southwest Philadelphia young adults, ages 15 to 24.

Programs include support for young adults involved in the criminal justice system, help with food and housing, job training, peer mediation, and advocacy on issues affecting Black youth, particularly health-care access and criminal justice inequities.

At its heart, YEAH Philly aims to give what its leaders (which include young people) say teens need most: a safe, nonjudgmental place to hang out during the hours they need it, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., where they can be empowered to lead and to serve.

And, if any need arises, YEAH can help, from getting a driver’s license to getting out of jail.

Hangout possibilities drew Seidle, then 13, to YEAH at a previous location, the Cobbs Creek Recreation Center. Founders Kendra Van de Water and James Aye “offered me pizza and asked me, ‘Would you like to have a conversation?’”

The conversation came just in time for Seidle, now employed full time as a shift manager at YEAH’s food giveaway. “My anger issues were bad,” she said. In seventh grade, she was fighting at school, and the situation was escalating.

“They helped get me anger management therapy,” she said. “I learned how to calm down, how to walk away. They helped me with my mental health.”

Last year, she returned the favor. As part of YEAH’s peer mediation group, she went to West Parkside’s Belmont High School, where “girls were fighting each other. They were friends who had become enemies,” she said. The YEAH team helped Belmont’s girls talk through the situation and saved most from expulsion and losing valued senior privileges like going to the prom.

As a teenager, Van de Water had none of those issues. She grew up in Lansdale and never had a police run-in until 16, when she went to a friend’s party in Philadelphia.

She was outside waiting for her mother to pick her up, but the police got to her first. She had violated curfew, they said. She told them she was waiting for her mother and turned to call her. As she turned, Van de Water said, she was grabbed roughly by officers and thrown to the ground. She was eventually taken to the old Youth Study Center on the Parkway where she was kept for five days.

If that wasn’t enough of a real-world education, she learned more from the other kids at the detention center. “They were in there for stabbing their grandma, killing their dog. Some had been there for over a year. They didn’t have family or support.

“The experience propelled me to learn all the things about the system, how the system is unjust, especially to Black people.”

Van de Water graduated from college and later served as a policy analyst for Philadelphia’s Police Advisory Commission. While there, she attended a youth anti-violence meeting.

What struck her immediately was that there were no youth at the meeting. The same thought occurred to Aye, another attendee, then a case manager at a violence intervention program run by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

They decided to work together. “We wanted to talk to young people, instead of talking at them,” she said. They devised a 90-question survey asking teens about their lives, their childhoods, what they did after school, what they liked to do, and their feelings about safety and support. To encourage participation, they paid stipends to the nearly 300 West and Southwest Philadelphia teens who answered survey questions in long interviews.

Van de Water and Aye learned that teens needed a place to be together. They organized gatherings and workshops at two recreation centers. For a year, in 2019, Aye and Van de Water funded everything themselves, from stipends to endless pizza.

YEAH’s kids pushed for a place of their own. In 2020, Van de Water and Aye raised $220,000 to buy the Walton Avenue rowhouse. “And that’s when everything took off,” she said.

“We invest directly in young people,” Van de Water said, with all kinds of help.

And they really mean all kinds: Embarrassed because he had no front teeth, one teen wore a COVID-19 mask long after the pandemic ended. YEAH got him to a dentist.

It’s not unusual for YEAH to buy young people a bed frame and a mattress, or to pay for a hot water heater. “How do we make you comfortable in your house right now, or how do we get you out of the house?” Van de Water said.

The teens “don’t understand that they deserve better,” she said. “You deserve to be able to live in a comfortable place. You deserve to go to work and not be beat up or bullied or shot at.”

Van de Water particularly wanted to work with young adults caught in the legal system, especially those arrested for violent crimes.

Besides employing lawyers, YEAH also fills in the way a supportive family might, working “with and on behalf of the young person, making sure they get what they need and that their rights aren’t violated,” she said.

“We come to your court date,” she said. “We start with immediate needs. They are usually couch surfing or homeless. They don’t have a lot of support. You can’t focus on the other things, like going to school or getting a job, if you don’t have basic needs.”

YEAH helps negotiate GPS monitoring, house arrest, and incarceration. They help those affected get an assignment to forestry camp, a better situation than local detention. Throughout, they focus on goals and opportunities.

It worked for Nafis Zollicoffer, 22.

When he first met YEAH, he, eight siblings, and his parents lived in a three-bedroom rowhouse. At 18, he wanted to provide for himself. Aye helped Zollicoffer obtain a Social Security card, a birth certificate, a driver’s license, and a car. “In 60 days, I got everything,” Zollicoffer marveled. He graduated from Holy Family College.

Then, after a friend was killed, Zollicoffer bought a gun. Pulled over on a routine traffic stop, he was arrested on felony gun charges and faced up to four years in prison if convicted.

YEAH got him a lawyer, resulting in a misdemeanor conviction, probation, and the possibility of applying for a pardon. YEAH helped him get jobs and training as a tow truck operator at YEAH’s nearby trade training center. YEAH also hired him as a full-time organizational assistant. “YEAH has a way of providing the skills and services in a way that people need when they need it,” Zollicoffer said.

A little later, Zollicoffer had no time to talk. Besides handing out food, YEAH Philly had partnered with the city’s health department to distribute free gun safes. It was up to Zollicoffer to manage the line.

Near the front was Ro Collins, who lives nearby. Some neighbors, she said, had worried when YEAH bought the rowhouse, fearing the teenagers would cause trouble. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

“They don’t have any foolishness,” she said.

Quite the opposite, said Tawfeeq “Feeq” Smith, 17, of West Philadelphia. “This group is helpful all the way around. People who don’t have food, they feed you. They care. Everybody who comes here grows. They make everybody better.”

Jane M. Von Bergen spent more than 25 years as a reporter and editor at The Inquirer. janevonbtheater@gmail.com

This article is part of a series about Philly Gives — a community fund to support nonprofits through end-of-year giving. To learn more about Philly Gives, including how to donate, visit phillygives.org.

Mission: To serve young people who are at the highest risk of being involved in the cycle of violence by both meeting their needs and empowering them to advocate for themselves and their communities

Young people served:

Annual spend: $2.12 million in fiscal year 2022

Point of pride: Deep impact on the lives of young people, lifting them out of poverty, and helping them reach goals they didn’t know were possible

Big dream: To raise $1.75 million to convert a warehouse into a training center for trades such as carpentry, automotive, and culinary

You can help: By assisting at events, making food deliveries to homebound seniors, and offering workshops

Support: phillygives.org/philly-gives/

Connect: 5257 Walton Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143, or online at yeahphilly.org

Website: yeahphilly.org