The Kresge Foundaton Awards $250,000 Challenge Grant for Youth Alternatives Family Center under Construction in South Portland

When completed, the Family Center will offer comprehensive, family-focused services to more than 5,000 families in Maine

PORTLAND, Maine – The Kresge Foundation has awarded a $250,000 challenge grant to Youth Alternatives (YA), a nationally accredited provider of services to children, youth and families throughout Maine.

The grant will help spur the completion of the Youth Alternatives Family Center, located at an historic barn on the grounds of the former Maine Youth Center in South Portland. The massive barn, as well as an 18,000-square-foot addition, are presently under renovation and construction.

To receive the funds, The Kresge Foundation requires that Youth Alternatives meet its goal of raising an additional $500,000 for its Family Initiative capital campaign through private gifts and grants by August 1.
Renovation of the barn – a former reformatory for boys in the early 1900s – and construction of the Family Center began in the spring of 2006. Slated to open later this year, the center will bring together many Youth Alternatives services, including support to families and children in need, conflict or crisis, and efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect. State-of-the-art training and meeting space also will be provided to other organizations in the area.

Youth Alternatives serves more than 5,000 children, youth and family members throughout Maine each year. The Family Center will enable the agency to enhance its existing family-focused programs and expand its capacity to serve even more Mainers in need.

“Competition for a challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation is fierce,” said Mike Tarpinian, president of Youth Alternatives since 1989. “This is a clear endorsement of our organization and an affirmation of the importance of our campaign and work with Maine’s children and families.”
“This donation to the campaign will allow us to expand our services to families as a whole,” Tarpinian added. “The trend in the mental health and child services arena is to shift away from encouraging residential placement for youth and toward providing support to families so children may remain at home where safe and possible. That’s what this center is all about – keeping families together and giving them the tools to work better.”

Youth Alternatives, a nonprofit social service agency founded in 1972, advances safe, happy, healthy childhoods and positive family relationships. The agency creates homes for vulnerable children and youth, supports parents and foster families, reaches out to homeless youth, offers substance abuse services, provides supportive employment services, advocates for families and works to prevent child abuse and neglect. Youth Alternatives relies on the support of the community, individuals, corporations, foundations and community groups.

The Kresge Foundation, one of the preeminent independent, private foundations in the country, is a national foundation with $3 billion in assets. Through its grant making programs, The Kresge Foundation seeks to strengthen nonprofit organizations by catalyzing their growth, connecting them to their stakeholders, and challenging greater support through grants. The Kresge Foundation concentrates its programming on capital campaigns as a key opportunity for nonprofit growth.

At the time of the December 2006 grant announcements, The Kresge Foundation had awarded a total of 205 grants for a total in excess of $146 million. For additional information, visit www.Kresge.org.

In additional to the construction, Youth Alternatives’ $2.7 million Family Initiative capital campaign will fund the implementation of a new information system to boost the agency’s ability to track and improve outcomes for the children and families it serves.

“This generous grant from The Kresge Foundation recognizes the value of the Family Initiative and what it will give to Maine’s children and families,” said Jean Gulliver, Chair of the Development Committee. “We are proud to receive this prestigious vote of confidence in our organization, our community and our ability to meet the challenge opportunity.”

For additional information or to make a donation to the campaign, visit the organization online at www.youthalternatives.org.

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The two images above show the soon-to-be-completed Youth Alternatives Family Center when renovation began and how the facilty looks now.