About Us

Teaching youth to create success over and over again
with service, education and support.

About Us

Organizational History

DuAnne Redus founded the non-profit organization, LifeWorks Institute, in Utah in 1992. The underlying question was 'what does a healthy, thriving community look like?' Her intention was to find ways to give back to her community. The first project involved raising corporate money, then recruiting corporate women to volunteer their time as mentors to help women get off welfare and to become self-sufficient. A year later 99% of the women remained self-sufficient. LifeWorks Institute then turned its focus to job training for youth and taught life skills classes funded by the JTPA Federal Program. Redus began to envision projects that were purely prevention based.

In 2001, a family crisis brought Redus and the LifeWorks Institute home to the growing community of Austin, Texas. The organizational focus on prevention looked at ways to create happy, healthy and thriving youth among the economically disadvantaged population.

That same year LifeWorks Institute was approved as an ongoing 501 c (3) status, Tax ID 87-0498737. As part of the city wide Youth Advisory Group, the organization saw the need for prevention at the middle-school level. Researching the statistics of the Texas Youth Commission and the Juvenile Justice System, Lifeworks Institute has narrowed its focus to prevention programs starting with middle-school youth.

In 2003, LifeWorks Institute received a total of $80,000 in grants. Sources included a vendor to the Texas Workforce Commission for a summer camp, Mississippi State University for a smoking/alcohol after-school prevention program, and Title IV federal funds as a service-learning partner with the Alternative Learning Center to assist youth in building an on-campus greenhouse which carried over through May, 2005.

The vision of developing a mentoring program was funded by a local foundation, and a successful mentor training pilot program was administered with high school youth (September, 2003- May, 2004).

In 2005 the name of the organization was changed to Youth Taking Charge (YTC) to more accurately reflect the organization's strategic focus.

YTC Strategic Focus

Problem:

Prevention in Texas is commonly seen as protecting the public from juvenile delinquents by incarceration
The capacity of the Texas Youth Commission which house's the states most delinquent youth offenders, tripled from 1994-2004
In 2002, 105,910 referrals were made to the juvenile justice system involving 74,643 juveniles (31,267 were repeat offenders). Of the total number, 49,898 were adjudicated to lock-up facilities
New arrivals who committed violent offenses increased from 33% to 37%
The result is an astronomical cost to taxpayers ($403 million in 2001 alone).

The projected growth of the Austin area implies a rise in these statistics.

Incarceration does not prepare youth for the transition into high school and employment, and therefore creates generational poverty with all the accompanying societal problems.

Youth Taking Charge Solution

YTC focuses on youth crisis prevention by intervening before youth become part of the problem.

YTC:

Provides personal development programs beginning with middle-school youth (12-14 years)
Provides consistent service, education and support for youth who stay in the program for 3+ years
Offers hands-on entrepreneurial business training in a real business, strengths-based service learning and job shadowing with mentors
Seeks to fund these programs partially through a self-sustainable business making the organization less dependent on annual grants and donations other than those required to maintain our current non-profit status.

YTC collaborates with Communities in Schools and other agencies who make referrals to the program. (http://www.youthtakingcharge.org/alliancePartners.asp) Mentors come from local colleges with students who are studying related fields of education, psychology, social work and business.

Results of YTC Programming and Projects:

More youth are served through consistent, long-term programs
Risk is reduced for youth to enter the juvenile justice system
More youth are better prepared for transitions to successful high school experiences
More youth learn to fish for a lifetime as a prevention strategy
Situational poverty (whether emotional, mental, social or economic) is prevented from becoming generational poverty.

Creating generational health makes YTC a model of success in the social context.