For almost 30 years, Young Women’s Freedom Center has created a leadership pipeline by and for system-impacted young women and trans youth of all genders to grow their professional and organizing skills in order to transform their lives and communities. Over the last few years, we know that in order to envision a world where system-impacted young women and trans youth of all genders have the resources, support, and economic opportunities to transform their lives and live self-sufficient and resilient lives that we need to expand our work to Los Angeles County.

As a newer organization in Los Angeles, we are honored to be one of the LA2050 grantees as we expand our work to pilot and launch Transform Your Hustle, a 12-week job training and life coaching program to meet system-impacted young people where they are at and build the skills for economic empowerment in their lives.

Over the last few months, YWFC staff have diligently conducted outreach to ensure that we can meet young people navigating systems of oppression where they are, in the streets, at the welfare offices, detention centers, and courts. Through our outreach, we kept meeting with young mothers that were sharing their stories with us, the impact of navigating poverty, intimate and State violence, their dreams for their children and their dreams to break generational cycles of poverty, violence, and incarceration. One young mother shared, “This shit has got to stop with me, my baby deserves more even if I didn’t get any support growing up.”

Throughout this process, we determined that young mothers needed space for themselves, to build their resiliency as they enter this new phase in their lives to break these generational cycles. They not only needed space to learn new skills and access healing, have meaningful conversations to support each other and their children, but they have also learned lessons in their lives and in motherhood that would not only support them in their journeys but also in transforming the conditions to support their children.

Therefore, our first cohort of Transform Your Hustle has focused on working with 10 young mothers and expecting mothers between the ages of 16-25 years old. They have focused on developing financial literacy, creating budgets, navigating the system, access to healing, how to prioritize self in motherhood and working, as well as technical job development, including resume building, creating professional and personal goals, and identifying job opportunities while mothering. One of the young mothers shared the following about her experience so far: “I just wanted to say thank you to you and the other ladies who work at the program! I know it's random but I appreciate you guys for the work you do and the gift cards to help us buy things for our babies.” Over the next few weeks, the young mothers and expecting mothers will continue to gain support in pursuing their goals.

While this work has been incredibly impactful, we recognize that we cannot fully allow young women and trans youth to tap into their full selves and do the dream work they desire to transform their lives when they are navigating constant challenges and trauma in their lives. In particular, many of the youth have shared that it is difficult to navigate transportation to programs and getting around LA to explore different opportunities they want to explore, especially with more than half of the participants navigating housing instability. Additionally, faced by the participants living in a group home is severe food insecurity. The food offered onsite is enough to fully nourish participants and they only receive an $18 food stipend for the month. Lastly, all participants shared the lack of support from family, friends, and community, which created additional barriers to entering or reentering the workforce and proposed additional challenges to accessing resources to support themselves and their children. YWFC has provided transportation support to programs, and collaborated with community partners to connect participants to resources. Young mothers need space to dream big and thrive.

In order for young people to be able to transform their lives they need economic support to build their resilience to live self-sufficient lives. One young mother shared, “The program has become a big help for me. I learn new things, yall have shown me new things I haven’t really heard before.” We recognize they need space to heal, access resources and learn. They have brought their full selves to support each other and learn from each other in ways that have been dynamic and rooted in self-determination.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to work with this cohort, evaluate their experiences, and revise curriculum. Upon completion of the program, participants will continue to work one to one with Self-Determination Coordinators and Peer Advocates on their professional and personal self-determined goals. For the next cohort of participants, we will outreach to participants impacted by the juvenile justice and foster care system.