Youth Opportunity Academy (alternately YO! Academy) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

alternative Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film * ''The Alternative ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

located in the

Sandtown-Winchester Sandtown-Winchester is a neighborhood in West Baltimore, Maryland. Known locally as Sandtown, the community's name was derived from the trails of sand that dropped from wagons leaving town after filling up at the local sand and gravel quarry back ...

neighborhood of

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. The school allows students who have dropped out to obtain either high school diplomas or

GED The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...

s. The school is located in the Lafayette Square

Community Center Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

, in a building that was originally built in 1972 and originally served as a branch of the

Enoch Pratt Free Library The Enoch Pratt Free Library is the free public library system of Baltimore, Maryland. Its Central Library and office headquarters are located on 400 Cathedral Street (southbound) and occupy the northeastern three quarters of a city block bound ...

YO! Baltimore

The academy is run in concert with

Baltimore City Public Schools Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), also referred to as Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) or City Schools, is a public school district in the city of Baltimore, state of Maryland, United States. It serves the youth of Baltimore Cit ...

by Youth Opportunity (YO!) Baltimore, a non-profit organization. YO! was founded in 2000 to provide workforce and education support services, mentoring and social services to young people (18-24) in Baltimore. The center also maintains a closet of donated clothes for jobs & interviews. It operates two community resource sites, one in the same center as the academy, the other in East Baltimore, at 1212 North Wolfe Street. Funded from 2000 to 2006 by federal grant, YO! has since operated with funding from the Mayor's Office of Economic Development, and has partnered with

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. The program has also received volunteers through the

AmeriCorps AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work prog ...

program.

References

External links

Youth Opportunity at the Mayor's Office of Employment Development

Youth Opportunity at Baltimore City Schools
Public schools in Baltimore Public high schools in Maryland Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore {{Maryland-school-stub