The Foundation is supporting Achieve!Minneapolis, a non-profit organization that seeks to connect the community more closely with Minneapolis public schools and at-risk youth in those schools (73 percent of whom are students of color, and 68 percent of whom live in poverty), in transforming its work readiness training program into an employer-endorsed Work Readiness Certification program, accessible to youth year-round. As part of this program development, advanced certification will be made available for multi-year participants. The program also includes a "peer educator" component designed to teach youth the importance of community service.

The Foundation is supporting CASA of Orange County (Court Appointed Special Advocates) in its ongoing community outreach campaign to attract additional mentor-advocates to work over an extended period of time with abused, abandoned and neglected youth in the local community. CASA OC expects to attract 150-180 new mentor-advocates from greater Orange County as a result of its current public- and media outreach program.

The Foundation is working with CITYarts on the Pieces for Peace mosaic project, which enables young people from around the globe to share their ideas about a peaceful future through personal works of art. Artwork submitted by young people from different countries have been combined into an online mosaic. An adapted version of the international mosaic was created as a work of public art in the Harlem district of New York City. The young people taking part in Pieces for Peace are empowered to articulate and live out a vision for peace through their own art, to develop valuable artistic, communications and social skills, and to make their own visible and lasting contribution to local community development. Their artworks are also part of a traveling exhibition that has been shown at Lincoln Center and the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan and is scheduled to travel to Europe and Israel in 2007.

The Foundation is supporting Courage Center, a major services agency for the disability community, in developing and maintaining the innovative Courage Youth Leadership Academy. The CYLA is designed to empower youth with disabilities to develop the skills, qualities and attitudes they need to live productive, independent lives and to become leaders in the broader disability community.

The Foundation is working with District 202, a not-for-profit community center run by and for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) youth through age 21, to strengthen the Youth Leadership Development Program (YLDP), which provides supportive work-learning opportunities within the center. Our support has made possible a part-time Fundraising/Community Outreach position for a high-school age young person not currently enrolled full-time in secondary education. This is related to District 202's youth development strategy of creating a full- or part-time youth staff position for every full-time adult staff position. By working closely with adult mentor-professionals, YLDP participants gain a greater understanding of themselves, their values, dreams and goals, and they develop and plan ways to implement their vision for personal and community leadership. YLDP also provides information, skills and resources to program participants that help them prepare for employment outside of District 202.

The Foundation partnered with New York's Fiver Children's Foundation to launch the SERVE II program for older teenagers (ages 17-18) with a particular focus on college preparation. Fiver is known for its extraordinary, ten-year commitment to youth in the organization’s care. This grant makes possible year-round supervision of post-high school preparation, direct partnership with select colleges for the preparation and placement of at-risk, minority youth, one-on-one counseling for college-bound Fiver youth (essay preparation, college advising), college workshops for students and parents, and paid internships for SERVE II participants within the Fiver community. A previous Allianz Foundation grant to Fiver had made possible the creation of a year-round counseling program for teens of all ages; SERVE II sharpens our program focus on college and career preparation for underserved young people.

The Foundation is supporting Great River Greening, an environmental organization that creates community partnerships to restore and protect natural resources, in engaging approximately 150 Twin Cities-area youth in resource development and service-learning projects related to the restoration of rare Midwestern oak savanna. Youth participants in the Help Make the World a Shade Better program are recruited from local high school environmental- and service organizations and are empowered to increase public awareness through the development of oak-related fact sheets and to take action through 6-10 specific service projects under the oversight of a Steering Committee comprised of members from local organizations and institutions, such as the Science Museum of Minnesota. The program also introduces youth to career possibilities in natural resource conservation.

The Foundation is supporting the Lang Youth Medical Program's Summer Internship Initiative at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) for rising tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders interested in science/medical careers. This initiative makes possible 20 six-week summer internship placements for under-represented minority – primarily Latino – youth in a wide variety of clinical settings, including Pharmacology, Hematology/Oncology, Community Public Health Programs and Radiology. During their paid internship, participants maintain a blog to share ideas and experiences, thus creating an early network for up-and-coming young scientists and health care professionals. NYPH is the university hospital of Columbia and Cornell Universities. Lang Youth is a six-year program created to provide equal opportunity in the health sciences for minority youth in the Washington Heights district of New York City.

The Foundation is supporting Larkin Street Youth Services, a non-profit organization that helps homeless, runaway and at-risk youth in San Francisco find healthy and lasting alternatives to street life, in strengthening its HIRE UP Day Labor Program. This program offers participants an opportunity to build work experience - in many cases for the first time - in a structured and supportive environment. Program participants work on a limited, part-time basis for San Francisco community organizations active in the arts, neighborhood improvement and environmental protection.

The Foundation is supporting Lawrence Hall Youth Services' Transitional Living Program (Supervised Apartments), a program for at-risk youth who have already demonstrated basic independent living skills. Youth participants in the program assume responsibility for household management, continuing education and maintaining employment. This grant serves, in part, to increase the sustainability of adult guidance in this process by supporting additional staff capacity in the area of life skills development.

The Foundation is working with PDHRE, People's Movement for Human Rights Learning, to create the first Human Rights City in the United States by engaging DC-area youth in human rights service-learning. This project will take place in two phases. In Phase One, local schools and youth organizations are to be selected and youth voluntarily engaged in a series of nine workshops, culminating in a joint, two-day youth retreat in DC. In Phase Two, youth leaders will meet with elected officials and policy makers, create a human rights implementation plan for their respective schools and organizations, based on key issues identified by the youth themselves, and collaborate with local NGOs active in promoting human rights as a framework for citizen engagement. These project efforts are directed toward developing the US national capital as an official "Human Rights City," thus joining for example, Rosario/Argentina, Kies/Mali, Edmonton/Canada, Graz/Austria and Musha/ Rwanda, as part of PDHRE's international network of Human Rights Cities. PDHRE is closely affiliated with the United Nations, and the PDHRE founder and director, Shulamith Koenig, was the recipient of the 2003 UN Human Rights Award, awarded in the past to Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King.

The Foundation is supporting Project Return, a not-for-profit organization that provides support services, education and housing for at-risk young women, in creating a new, non-residential program called HEAL. The purpose of HEAL is to promote resiliency, self-esteem and empowerment for teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 18 through community service. The program engages young women from throughout Fairfax County (CT) in service projects through partner organizations in Westport, Norwalk, Wilton, Bridgeport and other local communities. HEAL takes a peer-group approach, bringing participants into direct dialogue with each through regular full-group meetings and also engages parents directly in working to improve the outlook and engagement of their daughters through community service.

The Foundation is supporting Safe Space in expanding the Getting Beyond the System (GBS) program to empower and prepare at-risk youth from across the spectrum of Safe Space's services for life and careers as adults. GBS consists of 12-week seminars for 10-15 students each session (150 through autumn 2007). The program is focused especially on goal-setting, identifying one's strengths, preparing for college and engaging in informational interviews in professional offices. All GBS participants also have access to financial literacy classes, arts programming and numerous other support programs.

The Foundation is supporting Teen Living Programs, which operates Chicago's largest residential system for youth who are homeless, in creating and maintaining an innovative educational enrichment program called Integrated Skills for Independent Living, or I-SkIL. The I-SkIL program combines life-skills training, education, employment and community service in order to prepare participants for independent living and community leadership.

The Foundation has partnered with World Wildlife Fund to create the Southeast Climate Witness Program to empower young people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-five high-school students, nominated by their teachers from among those who had to relocate after Katrina, will be selected by WWF to explore in-depth the science of climate change and to assess the vulnerability of their region. The students, chosen from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, will take part in a scientific vulnerability assessment of the southeast coast, attend skill-building and career-awareness workshops, engage in field work (e.g., wetlands restoration), and will take part in a Youth Summit in Washington, DC, in July 2008. The program will give these young people a forum for sharing their own stories, equip them with scientific knowledge on the impact of climate change, introduce them to careers in climate-related fields, and give them a voice in public dialogue on climate change.

The Foundation has joined with YouthBridge-NY, an affiliate of the Jewish Community Relations Council's CAUSE New York division, to create the new Engaging Workplace Diversity program. YouthBridge-NY is dedicated to educating young leaders to engage diversity through various youth fellowship and service-learning programs. Engaging Workplace Diversity places exceptional teen leaders in corporate environments in order to equip these future business and civic leaders with the knowledge and experience they need to engage and promote diversity at school, in college, at work and throughout their lives. Program participants join with corporate professionals in developing strategies for creating an atmosphere of mutual respect, teamwork and communal responsibility as well as tools for promoting constructive conflict management, proper business etiquette, cultural sensitivity and for fostering innovation. As many as eight current Bridge Fellows will be placed in year-long academic internships in corporate environments and will meet collectively once a month with top professionals for seminars on best practices of engaging diversity in professional environments.

The Foundation is supporting YouthLink's Independent Living Skills (ILS) program to empower young people in the agency's care to develop and strengthen the skills they need to gain employment and maintain stable housing. YouthLink, a non-profit agency affiliated with the Minneapolis Project OffStreets network, provides housing and supportive services to homeless and at-risk youth in the Twin Cities area.

The Foundation is supporting Youth Venture, which was created by Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka - Innovators for the Public. Ashoka is dedicated to finding, supporting, and selecting leading social entrepreneurs as well as creating infrastructure to grow the citizen sector. Ashoka's vision is a world in which everyone is a changemaker. Youth Venture propels this vision by catalyzing a movement of young social leaders. Youth Venture provides seed funding and ongoing assistance to youth-led social initiatives, and has launched more than 750 "Ventures" to date. The Allianz Foundation grant is helping support this movement of young changemakers through a networking system that includes local gatherings of Venturers, a best practices exchange, an interactive online platform, an annual project competition to keep former Venturers involved in the network, and an annual Venturer summit.