Homey

ICRI is the fiscal sponsor of HOMEY, and has been deeply involved with the organization since it was founded in 1999. HOMEY, which stands for Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth, is a grassroots organization that serves youth in the Mission District and across the city of San Francisco. Over the past decade, HOMEY has become a major voice for youth at the local and statewide levels.

HOMEY works with young people of color from low income neighborhoods of San Francisco, with a particular focus on Latino youth in the Mission District. HOMEY’s guiding principal is to be informed and led by the youth we serve, and all of our programs–from intensive case management to violence prevention workshops to vocational training to community advocacy– are staffed by bilingual and bicultural leaders who have deep ties to the communities we serve.

Kalpulli Program

Kalpulli (an indigenous Nahuatl word for “council”) provides intensive community organizing and policy advocacy training to a carefully-selected group of youth. The participants design advocacy campaigns and are led through the process of policy advocacy with state and local government officials. At the same time, the youth also receive intensive case management, individual mentoring, and psychosocial support. We also work hard to provide a sense of community and cultural connection for the youth, and to provide them with opportunities for spiritual and emotional healing and growth through incorporation of traditional ceremonies and rituals.

Homies Skoolin’ Homies

HOMEY works to keep young people of color engaged in school and off the streets. We run in-school support groups at public high schools and middle schools in the San Francisco Unified School District. These support groups provide youth with the opportunity to build positive peer relationships and an alternative to becoming affiliated with a gang to gain social and economic support. Each youth participating in the support groups also receives intensive case management and one-on-one mentoring. We work to create new alternatives for the youth we serve, to give them meaningful educational and vocational opportunities that can lead to economic empowerment instead of poverty.

Safe Haven

With funding from San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families, HOMEY provides evening and weekend safe haven programming to allow youth to have a safe alternative to being on the street. The youth participating in the program are at particularly high risk of street violence, gang violence, and participation in the drug trade. We work to engage youth in cultural, artistic, community building, and life skills programs. At the same time we provide individualized intervention in the form of mentoring, counseling, case management, and linking youth to educational and vocational opportunities.

Native Graphix

We believe that a critical component of violence prevention is providing meaningful economic alternatives to youth. At HOMEY, we run a full-service in-house silkscreening business called Native Graphix. We involve youth in every part of the business, so they can simultaneously learn a valuable trade, express themselves artistically, and develop skills in business development, leadership, and financial management. Native Graphix also serves as a social enterprise for HOMEY, furthering our mission of educating and empowering youth, while also earning much-needed unrestricted income to support our agency.

To learn more, please visit www.homeysf.org.