REAL Youth Initiative - Youth Repair Fund

In 2021, we launched the REAL Youth Initiative as a project to help currently and formerly incarcerated young people build a sustainable and safe community alongside one another grounded in Black revolutionary principles. A large part of this endeavor has been dedicated to providing holistic reentry services to young people in our program coming home after a period of incarceration. We believe firmly that we must build the infrastructure to sustain and care for one another in order to flourish as a revolutionary abolitionist community of directly impacted people.

Almost all young people coming home from incarceration face myriad obstacles to providing for their basic needs and safety. Not only do we come home traumatized after being forcibly separated from our family, friends, and community, but we also often return to the same neighborhoods we lived in prior to incarceration and thus face continued risk of being targeted in acts of community violence as well as for constant harassment, intimidation, and arrest by the police. This is in addition to the fact that the length of our incarceration as young people often robs us of professional skills and experiences that make it difficult to find safe avenues for paid work.

This fund seeks to work towards the repair of the immense harm done to young people in Illinois through youth detention and incarceration. Each donation will help service groceries, clothing, housing, utility bills, and other necessities for young people in the REAL program who have recently been released from a youth prison. This fund will be critical in helping young people get back on their feet after incarceration and grow in a safe community with our organization towards sustainability, abolition, and revolution.

Donate to the REAL Youth Repair Fund today!