Leaders of YouthPowerMN, a leadership institute of St. Paul Youth Services, present what they learned during an educational workshop with Urban Boatbuilders.

Leaders of YouthPowerMN, a leadership institute of St. Paul Youth Services, present what they learned during an educational workshop with Urban Boatbuilders. COURTESY | ST. PAUL YOUTH SERVICES

The city of St. Paul and the St. Paul Police Department started St. Paul Youth Services more than 45 years ago to address increasing numbers of youth of color encountered in the juvenile justice system. According to its website, SPYS offered innovative programs targeting early intervention in schools and the community.

SPYS expanded in 2017, adding a leadership institute called YouthPowerMN that focuses on youth leadership, social entrepreneurship and activism. The SPYS institute changed the organization’s focus from “systems changing kids to kids changing systems,” said Tracine Asberry, SPYS executive director.

Those youth leaders acted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asberry said. One example was using what they had learned to brainstorm ways to stay connected with and to help peers, from “help text threads” to online forums for athletes to discuss at-home workouts, she said.

Asberry credits the work to some of the funding SPYS receives from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development for its overall operations, with a focus on YouthPowerMN programs.

YouthPowerMN programs are offered in person after school and during the summer, where youth participate at least two days a week in three program elements: healing and identity, exploration and innovation, and creating policy change. In those sessions, youth propose ways to create change on issues that impact their lives. For example, in past years, youth have held forums for school board candidates, advocated against punitive curfew laws and proposed new ways of distributing city charitable funds for youth organizations.

A parish collection for CCHD in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis will take place Nov. 19-20. About 25% of the collection will be distributed locally during the 2023-2024 grant year, through a Christian Sharing Fund managed by the Center for Mission with assistance from an archdiocesan advisory board.

Recipients for 2022-2023 are Hispanic Outreach of Goodhue County, which advocates for equal and just treatment of Hispanic people, including in housing, safety and immigration rights; and St. Paul-based Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing (MICAH).

St. Paul Youth Services is one of three organizations in the archdiocese that applied for and are receiving national funding for the 2022-2023 grant year from CCHD. The others are CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en La Lucha), a Minneapolis-based workers’ rights organization, and the Ostara Initiative, which, in Minnesota, supports incarcerated pregnant women and new mothers through the Minnesota Prison Doula Project.

The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops founded the CCHD in 1970 to assist domestic anti-poverty organizations that support community and economic development programs nationally and locally.

To learn more about the work of groups funded through CCHD, reserve a link to a Zoom presentation taking place Nov. 15 from 6:30-8 p.m. Find the RSVP at archspm.org.