Partnerships & Initiatives

YAP is a community-based project with an innovative approach to advocating for youth in the courtroom and the community. We recognize the need to address the many issues that face young people in order to prevent chronic court involvement. YAP has spearheaded many creative partnerships with state and local organizations, schools, and programs to develop new services and identify existing resources that meet the needs of young people in Boston's neighborhoods.

YAP Programs & Initiatives:
Juvenile Defense Network | EDLaw Program | Community Notebooks | Know the Law | Youth Advocacy Foundation

Partner Programs:
Children's Law Center of Massachusetts | Equal Justice Partnership | Juvenile Bar Development Initiative | The Roxbury Network | Citizens for Juvenile Justice | Neighborhood-Based Team

Juvenile Defense Network
The Juvenile Defense Network (JDN), is a YAP initiative founded in 2002. JDN is a Massachusetts based training and support project established to meet the needs of juvenile defense lawyers who represent children in delinquency and youthful offender cases. Some of the services JDN offers include trainings, advice calls, mailings, a listserv, and more.

Click Here to access the JDN home page for more information, or download the JDN Brochure (in .pdf format).

  ^ back to top

The EDLaw Project
Founded in January 2000, the EdLaw Project is an educational advocacy partnership between the Children's Law Center of Massachusetts, Inc. (CLCM) and the Youth Advocacy Project (YAP). Motivated by the shared belief that educational success is essential for children to thrive, YAP and CLCM launched the EdLaw Project with a mission of advocating for the education services that Boston's highest risk children's need to succeed. Click Here for more information about the EDLaw program.

  ^ back to top

Community Notebooks
The Community Notebooks are guides to local resources for youth in the Boston-area. Bar advocates, court professionals, and other youth workers can use the Community Notebooks to connect their clients to services in the community that fit their clients’ needs. Each Community Notebook focuses on one of four topics – Girls, Out-of-School-Time, Health and Wellness, or Education, and includes an extensive guide to local programming, as well as articles and other resources in the community. The Community Notebooks are published jointly by YAP and the Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts. Click Here to access information about the notebook online.

  ^ back to top

Know the Law
Know the Law is a community education initiative that brings information about the law and the juvenile justice system to youth and youth-serving professionals throughout the community. The workshops are facilitated by staff attorneys, community outreach specialists, and social service providers, and are offered to organizations and groups interested in learning more about the law. Click Here for more information on the workshops.

  ^ back to top

Youth Advocacy Foundation
The Youth Advocacy Foundation, Inc. (YAF) is a support organization that makes private contributions available to the Youth Advocacy Project (YAP) possible. YAF itself has no employees, and relies on its Board of Directors, who provide advice to the Youth Advocacy Project and assist in fundraising. YAF is a 501(c)(3), and therefore all contributions are tax deductible, as provided by law. Click Here for more information about the Youth Advocacy Foundation or to make a donation.

  ^ back to top

Children's Law Center of Massachusetts
The Children's Law Center of Massachusetts, Inc. (CLCM), which serves as the fiscal sponsor of the EdLaw Project, is a legal resource center that provides legal representation exclusively for children of indigent and low-income families who are abused, neglected, runaways, delinquent, and have special education or mental health needs. The Center's expertise exceeds the traditional boundaries of legal expertise by issue area, allowing for comprehensive legal representation of children on all matters.
Click Here to view CLCM's very helpful Community Education Materials page.

  ^ back to top

Equal Justice Partnership
The mission of the Equal Justice Partnership is to identify the root causes of delinquency and chronic court involvement and develop comprehensive and innovative solutions in the field of community justice. The Partnership is an effort by the primary stakeholders in the Juvenile Court to creatively and collaboratively seek solutions to some of the most serious problems facing families today. Its members include a wide array of service providers and advocates, including the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the Department of Youth Services, the Department of Mental Health, the Department of Medical Assistance, the Department of Public Health, the Commissioner of Probation, the Trial Court, the Juvenile Court, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Office of the Attorney General, the Suffolk County District Attorney, the Boston Public Schools, and the Boston Police Department. Over the next few years, the group hopes to work together to address substance abuse, academic failure, scarcity of mental health services, and other issues. For more information on this partnership, please contact Josh Dohan, Director of the Youth Advocacy Project.

  ^ back to top

Juvenile Bar Development Initiative
The Juvenile Bar Development Initiative is YAP's effort to work with the juvenile defense bar in Boston and throughout Massachusetts to better serve indigent, court-involved children. JDBI's priority is to develop a network to provide support, mentoring, training and information exchange to the juvenile defense bar.

  ^ back to top

The Roxbury Network
The Roxbury Network is a collaboration between YAP and more than a dozen Roxbury-based, youth-serving agencies in an effort to help community-based agencies act more responsively to the needs of families in the community. The goals of the network are to maximize existing resources, to work collectively to improve and develop services, and to develop a strategy for long-term systemic change. For more information please contact La Alianza Hispana.

  ^ back to top

Citizens for Juvenile Justice
(CJJ) is a non-partisan, statewide membership organization that relies on sound research and data in advocating for effective policies and educating the public about juvenile justice. It is the only organization in Massachusetts that gathers knowledge and expertise relative to juvenile justice from a broad and diverse group of treatment professionals, researchers, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers and interested citizens. YAP has played an active role in CJJ since its founding. During 1999-2000, YAP was active on CJJ's Board of Directors and on Committees, offering YAP an opportunity to collaborate on shaping critical juvenile justice policy issues. Contact Citizens for Juvenile Justice (www.cfjj.org) for more information.

  ^ back to top

Neighborhood-Based Team
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed an initiative that focuses on Neighborhood Transformation and Family Development (NTFD). NTFD's mission is to help challenging neighborhoods become places where children and their families can flourish. Roxbury's Dudley neighborhood has been chosen, along with 21 other communities across the country, to participate in the first phase of NTFD, called Making Connections. YAP has been an active participant on the Neighborhood Based Team in the Making Connections efforts. This participation has afforded YAP the opportunity to work with local residents and agency representatives to create the foundation of a family-driven community agenda. Please contact the Annie E. Casey Foundation (www.aecf.org) for more information on the Neighborhood Transformation and Family Development (NTFD) Initiative.

  ^ back to top