Our Mission

The Center for Young Women`s Development is a nonprofit organization located in San Francisco. Our mission is to provide gender specific, peer based opportunities for high-risk low- and no-income young women to build healthier lives and healthier communities. We work to ensure that young women who have been homeless, incarcerated, involved in the juvenile justice system, or otherwise severely impacted by poverty to be able to achieve self-sufficiency and become positively engaged in their communities. All of our programs have been designed using a holistic approach that recognizes each young woman as a whole person who already has the experience and strength necessary to become a powerful leader and agent of change.



Our values

Sisterhood:

Creating community among women

Personal Development:

Offering young women opportunities to gain skills

Constituency Direction:

Ensuring that the young women who participate in our programs have input into their direction

Social Justice:

Working to create a just world for all people



Our Approach

We have learned a lot about what it takes for young women from our communities to heal from the violence and oppression they have experienced. We focus our work in the four following domains:



Health: When we talk about health, we mean a person`s overall physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being. Young women come to CYWD having experienced domestic violence, assault, rape, emotional abuse, addiction, and other traumatic life events and health challenges. We help young women take control of their health through: sexual health education, self-defense training, therapeutic massage, acupuncture, yoga, herbology, mental health services [therapy, psychiatry], altar making, retreats, and more.



Critical Thinking: Critical thinking combines reflection and action to allow young women to come to terms with their own experiences, understand them in the larger context of our society, and take responsibility for how they choose to respond. Using critical thinking, young women can begin to strategize goals for themselves and visualize the types of changes they want to see in their communities and in the world. We encourage critical thinking through: social biography, civic engagement activities, attending city commission and board meetings, political education, policy work, and other activities.



Community Building: Unlike other programs, we do not believe that success is achieved by a young woman "escaping" her circumstances, but by a young woman re-investing in her community through positive involvement and work for social justice. We build community through: street outreach, organizing campaigns, conferences, trainings, social activities, and service projects.



Skills Development: The young women we worked with have been marginalized by the educational system and overlooked for other learning opportunities. In order for a young woman to achieve self-sufficiency, she must possess a variety of skills. We work with young women to develop: literacy, math skills, job etiquette, personal economic strategies, resumes, interview skills, self-expression, assertiveness, conflict resolution, etc.