Community Transformation through Online Access to Amer-I-Can Life Skills Program

Community safety

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Amer-I-Can believes that success is there for those who want it, plan for it and take action to achieve it. Currently, systems-impacted youth and adults in Los Angeles County can only benefit from the transformative Amer-I-Can Life Skills Program if they are enrolled with one of our community-based or justice-involved partners. By making Amer-I-Can available online, we can greatly expand our reach and impact. Amer-I-Can's proven youth outcomes of improved attendance and grades and decreased disciplinary incidents, and adult outcomes of increased employment and decreased recidivism and reliance on social services, could be expanded to hundreds of thousands more participants. It could even strengthen families through in-home access. In today's challenging economic times, the best way to expand our reach is through technology. By digitizing our curriculum and facilitating online access for many more in need, we realize Amer-I-Can's mission of changing mindsets from "I-Can't to I-Can."

In order to level the playing field for the disenfranchised in Los Angeles County, it is imperative that Amer-I-Can enable ease of access for acquiring the skills that make our community members future ready. More than 85% of those we serve are Black, Latin-X, Asian/Pacific Islander or Bi/Multi-Racial. Additionally, the vast majority are gang involved.
From our organization's inception, Amer-I-Can has served as a catalyst for bringing communities together. We have facilitated numerous cross sector partnerships with organizations such as schools, churches, corporations, detention centers, community organization, street outreach groups, law enforcement and more. However, enhanced access to critical life skills would help bridge the gap between the need and our physical capacity to serve.
Through this LA2050 grant, we will expand the Amer-I-Can Life Skills Program from serving thousands of LA County systems-involved youth and adults to serving hundreds of thousands. By digitizing our curriculum and making it available via online subscription, we will accomplish the following: 1.) Increased access for our most underserved populations; 2.) Expanded flexibility to serve those with nontraditional schedules because of employment or childcare constraints; 3.) Interactive testing feedback that allows students to know if they have mastered the curriculum; and 4.) Reliable data that will allow the organization to further demonstrate the efficacy of our program with targeted populations.

For decades, the Amer-I-Can Life Skills Program has had continuous contracts with LA County Probation and the Los Angeles County Office of Education, as well as periodic contracts with a wide range of community organizations. In fact, we are currently serving more than 400 youth and young adults in alternative schools and detention facilities in Los Angeles County on a daily basis.
Digitizing our curriculum and making it available online will have numerous, positive impacts. For instance, judges could easily mandate completion of our online curriculum as an alternative to incarceration for first-time, youth offenders. This would give youth a "last line of defense" before entering the adult prison system. Additionally, smaller organizations that want to partner with Amer-I-Can could now easily do so, allowing us to help more of the 30,000 children served annually in foster care, 20,000 juveniles charged annually with crimes and more than 70,000 adults charged annually with felonies.