Continued support from Comcast NBCUniversal is bolstering Youth Advocate Programs (YAP), Inc.’s efforts to deliver effective alternatives to youth incarceration, residential care and other services that make neighborhoods safer. Comcast NBCUniversal is making the national nonprofit’s new :30 But I’m Not PSA available to its nationwide network.
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa., YAP partners with youth justice, child welfare, education, public safety, and other systems in 35 states and Washington, DC., delivering rehabilitative and neighborhood safety services in homes, schools, and other community sites. YAP’s evidence-based model reduces communities’ reliance on placing young people in youth justice and treatment facilities and helps cities curb neighborhood violence.
Produced in partnership with The CauseWay Agency, YAP’s new PSA is the second of the nonprofit’s But I’m Not PSA series, which features former program participants with the staff Advocates and behavioral health professionals who empowered them and their families to thrive. The donated airtime, valued at more than $540,000, extends Comcast NBCUniversal’s in-kind support which began in 2022 when the YAP PSA series made its debut across the nationwide network.
The YAP model focuses on hiring staff from the neighborhoods they serve and providing ongoing training to equip them with skills to connect program participants and their parents/guardians with individualized “wraparound services” – educational, emotional, and economic tools -- to firm their family foundation. Among those tools is the YAP Tom Jeffers Endowment Fund scholarship, funded primarily by employee donations, which provides program participants with tuition for college and trade schools and laptop computers.
Partnering with nonprofits, Comcast NBCUniversal seeks to advance efforts for people to live better lives by providing them more opportunities to achieve success, with a particular focus on promoting how technology is a key to economic mobility.
Guided by its “no reject, no eject” policy, YAP’s decades of service include working with many young people whose histories include serious offenses, multiple arrests, and lengthy out-of-home placements. John Jay College of Criminal Justice research found 86% of YAP’s youth justice participants remain arrest free, and six – 12 months after completing the program, nearly 90% of the youth still lived in their communities with less than 5% of participants in secure placement.
The new YAP PSA directs viewers to learn more about YAP’s work at www.YAPInc.org.