The Fresh Start Program is an alternative to incarceration (ATI) intervention program designed to provide leadership tools and mentors that will help guide youth in making positive decisions as individuals and as a team as they re-enter society. 

Fresh Start allows its participants to engage in peer discussions about every day trials and tribulations such as: parent-child conflict, peer pressure, self-esteem, depression, anger management, alcohol & substance abuse, domestic violence, gangs and gang violence, teen pregnancy, sex and sex abuse, community involvement, education, independence, leadership and much more.  They are allowed to express themselves freely, however respectfully without judgment from others.  Members will be exposed to various role play workshops and team activities allowing them to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes".  This increases their awareness in what their peers are going through and learn how to handle various social challenges in positive and productive ways. 

Fresh Start provides an outlet for personal development.  The program is comprised of four components: Life Skills, Assessments, Individual Sessions, and Community Service.

·  Life Skills:  We currently have (2) life skill coaches, both of which have college degrees and are actually reformed gang members.  We felt we needed to choose life skill coaches that these gang youth offenders could not only relate to but also look up to.  At the inception of the program, we felt these reformed gang members could reach these youth like no one else could.  We were right!

So far, we have been able to be successful despite our limited resources given our “Life Skills” model.  In a classroom setting, the participants engage in open discussion based on the participants challenges and concerns on a day to day basis.  The life skills coach creates an environment where the participants are encouraged to critically think about solutions to these day to day challenges.  We take the approach that no answer is incorrect, but rather a source for further discussion.

·  Assessments: MYDC provides assessments to some students that require further assistance.  Unfortunately, not all of these youth offenders stay on a straight path.  These are still troubled youth and they may get re-arrested, miss their curfew or fail to comply with other aspects of their sentence and/or the rules of their probation, resulting in the need for further evaluation.  Therefore a comprehensive questionnaire is administered a general evaluator. 

These questionnaires are essential in helping to reform these youth offenders because depending on what they reveal to us determines if they need additional assistance that MYDC can not provide.  In that case, through our affiliations with Community Partnership Referral & Resournces, we are able to refer them to outside vendors such as: Samaritan Village, Faith Missions, or Daytop, etc.  

The fact that MYDC refers some of their participants to outside vendors does not mean that we cease contact with them.  We request and receive progress reports from the various institutions. 
·  Individuals: After an assessment is completed, it may also be determined that the participant is in need of one on one sessions.  These are hourly one on one sessions where the youth offender is able to express himself and discuss issues in a more intimate and confidential setting.  We have found that some participants open up to additional issues in a more private setting opposed to the peer group environment of the life skills sessions.  Incorporating the one on one with the life skill sessions allows the participants to open up more freely getting to the route of many of their issues.