It started in a tiny office before Katrina. Now this nonprofit reaches kids across New Orleans.

The cluster of buildings forms a community unto itself in the heart of New Orleans' Central City.

Shoppers amble in and out of a thrift shop that provides job training for teens. Kids refurbish bikes at a shop next door, learning a trade and practicing customer service skills. Across the street, outside an old bank-turned-childcare center, youngsters shoot hoops on a shaded court under the eye of Darren Alridge, 33, who first found refuge here from Central City’s streets some 15 years ago.

The Youth Empowerment Project, or YEP, didn’t always have this much space.

Formed just under a year before Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans in August of 2005, the nonprofit first operated out of a single office on the corner of Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard and Terpischore Street, helping kids in a far less-prosperous Central City piece their lives back together after returning from Louisiana’s youth justice system.

Katrina unleashed an explosive need for schooling, counseling and support for navigating daily challenges in the rebuilding city. That landscape — and a scourge of violence affecting New Orleans’ young people — empowered YEP’s founders, with the help of donors, to deepen its roots and grow its services.

“This country has too many resources, and we have too much responsibility, to not do all we can to give kids a sense of hope, to provide them with safety and security and love,” said Melissa Sawyer, one of YEP’s founders and the group’s CEO.

Over the past two decades, YEP has added the bike shop, thrift store and the after-school building, joining several developments that have risen to brighten a once-economically stagnant neighborhood. Its adult education classes, job training and free after-school and summer programs for kids ages seven to 16 are available not just in Central City, but in classrooms from New Orleans East all the way to Algiers.

The organization now serves not just youth returning from the custody of Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice, but practically anyone who needs its services. Its programs reach about 1,000 people each year across its locations in five parts of the city.

Last week, YEP celebrated its 20th year in New Orleans.

Those who’ve received YEP’s services — many of whom, like Alridge, later come back to work at the organization — say YEP offered a sense of community and direction when they needed it most. Many made their way to YEP’s high school equivaalency programs during periods of upheaval after Katrina or following brushes with the law.

Mentor programs

Alridge came to YEP on a referral from a judge in 2009. At 18 years old, he was facing decades in prison on a car theft charge, he said. He knew it was time to make a change. After growing up in New Orleans’ Calliope projects, Katrina set him on a path of instability, bouncing him around from St. James Parish to Baton Rouge to Texas and ultimately landing him in trouble with the law.

Going before that judge in 2009, Alridge felt a need to make a change as he contemplated how he would begin providing for his then-1-year-old son. At YEP, he secured his GED in just a few weeks.

Alridge’s infectious energy and relentless optimism so inspired the organization’s staff that they hired him as a tutor in the adult education program soon after he secured his diploma.

Now, as a site coordinator of the childcare center, Alridge mentors young men and boys who face many of the same challenges he once did. Pressures to take to the streets are much the same now as they were then, he said, though social media sometimes inflames tensions for kids these days.

“I always was a leader,” Alridge said as he waited for kids to start streaming into the youth center one recent afternoon. “I just needed to find a place where I could be a positive leader, and a positive role model to people who want to be led.”

‘Not all I am’

Wanda Rogers stumbled upon YEP one day in 2012 after wandering out of Orleans Parish Criminal Court at Tulane and Broad. She was there for her son, who’d gotten into some trouble. But his court hearing was his ordeal to navigate, so Rogers went for a walk.

She came across another part of YEP’s web of learning centers and community-support facilities: the organization’s Mid-City Adult Learning Center on South Broad Avenue, which offered free courses for adults trying to obtain their high-school equivalency degrees.

The idea of going back to school appealed to Rogers. She’d been working as a custodian and had been turned down for multiple promotions because she didn’t have a high school diploma, she said.

Rogers enrolled at YEP’s adult learning program that same day. Three months later, she’d secured her GED and earned a promotion to a supervisory role at the dental school.

As they had with Alridge, staff at the organization saw something in Rogers. They asked her to return as a part-time teacher.

A dozen years later, Rogers works full-time as a site coordinator and educator at YEP’s Learning Center on the West Bank, helping adults from that area earn the same certification she did a dozen years ago. Through interactions with her students, who range from 16-year-olds referred by juvenile court judges to a 77-year-old man, Rogers glimpses the myriad challenges New Orleanians face.

But she reminds her students that they’re more than those struggles.

“I’m from the Desire Housing Project,” Rogers said, referencing the New Orleans development where she grew up, “but that’s not all I am.”

'Do the work’

Sawyer, the group’s CEO and co-founder, said YEP faces a new set of questions about whether to expand even further as it surpasses the 20-year threshold.

The organization has pondered its growth as New Orleans continues to grapple with crumbling infrastructure, more-powerful hurricanes and crushing housing costs.

“We all know the challenges we face," Sawyer said. "Yet, there is still something absolutely unique that will always have New Orleans and her people fighting outside her weight class."

“We just put our heads down and do the work,” she added. “We’re trying to help kids.”

For more information visit www.youthempowermentproject.org.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to more accurately describe Darren Alridge's role at the Youth Empowerment Project.