NAACP commends NYC's Young Men's Initiative

Program Designed to Increase Job and Educational Opportunities for Black and Latino Men

(Washington, DC) – The NAACP applauds the Bloomberg Family Foundation, activist George Soros and New York City for funding the Young Men’s Initiative, a program designed to advance African American and Latino men in the city.  The program will spend as much as $127 million to provide job placement and educational opportunities to an estimated 315,000 black and Latino men between the ages of 16 and 24.

“New Job training and educational opportunities are essential to curtailing institutional and economic disparities in the black and Latino communities,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.  “If the Young Men’s Initiative is strategically sound and properly executed, minority men will be more likely to succeed and thrive in our global economy.”

The program will also attempt to overhaul the city’s Department of Probation, which currently monitors nearly 30,000 New Yorkers, a majority of whom are black and Latino males.  The reconfiguration of the department includes adding five satellite offices in neighborhoods with high populations of at-risk youth and retraining the city’s 524 probation officers.

“This significant change to the probation system is an important step in making our justice system smart on crime,” stated Robert Rooks, Director of the NAACP’s Criminal Justice program.

 The initiative will roll out this fall and the city will hold month meetings to track its progress.