30-Year-Old Nonprofit Strengthens Team & Resources to Serve More Homeless Youth Tucson, AZ – In June 2016, Youth On Their Own (YOTO) welcomed Matthew Palmer as its new Director of Finance and Operations. Matthew joins YOTO after a decade-long tenure at St. Louis Efforts for AIDS, a nonprofit organization addressing care, treatment, and prevention [...]
This fall new federal guidelines will be put in place to help homeless students across the country. The changes within the U.S. Department of Education will go into effect in October. One of the changes will make it possible for homeless students to get some partial credits if they have to change schools, which [...]
Students in Tucson, Arizona, are back in classrooms Thursday. But the day before, when educators and school officials are typically putting the finishing touches on classrooms and pouring over schedules, a more important mission underway. On Wednesday, at 8 a.m., as temperatures surged into the 90s, 26 teams of educators and community leaders – [...]
On June 1st, Youth On Their Own (YOTO) welcomed Nicola Hartmann as its new Executive Director. Nicola joins the YOTO team after a six-year tenure at San Miguel High School, where she served as the Director of Advancement & Corporate Relations, and a two-year term at the Sunnyside Foundation, where she was Executive Director. [...]
Pima County is home to thousands of youth and for some, staying in school can be difficult. The Tucson-based nonprofit “Youth on Their Own” (YOTO) has been assisting homeless teens from across Pima County for the past 30 years. Alexis Westmiller is one of those teens, who recently graduated from Palo Verde High School. [...]
As the world gears up for the Summer Olympics, local roofers and builders invite the public to join in as they prepare to “Go for the Gold” with a charity bowling tournament to benefit Youth On Their Own. “This is a lot of competitors who come together for a good cause, kind of like [...]
When Benjamin Carnahan was 15-years-old, he says he ended up living by himself on the streets. “I was kind of lost,” he said. “I didn’t have any plan, I was just going day by day, doing my thing. I wasn’t in school for two years unfortunately.” He eventually went back to school and learned [...]
The number of homeless students in the United States has doubled in the past decade. During the 2013-14 school year, more than 1.3 million students were homeless, a 7 percent increase over the previous school year, according to a new report by the advocacy group Civic Enterprises and the polling firm Hart Research Associates. [...]
Grant Program Connects Homeless Youth to Higher Education and Employment On June 14th, Youth On Their Own (YOTO) launched a new summer program called JAG Works, designed to provide career and college readiness programming to homeless and at-risk youth in Pima County. Through the JAG Works model, youth work to achieve improvement in academic [...]
“My sisters and I were going hungry. We lived off of ramen noodles for weeks at a time; we didn’t know what my mom did with the EBT money for food. We became fatigued and skinny. During those weeks of living in paranoia, my mom acted like life was dandy, still buying liquor and [...]