Youth Empowerment for Advancement Hangout (YEAH Inc.)

YEAH Philly builds real safety, healing, and liberation with Black youth through community, accountability, and advocacy. We work to replace punishment and surveillance with care, opportunity, and justice, connecting violence intervention, youth-led research, and policy transformation to dismantle systems that harm young people.

YEAH envisions a Philadelphia where young people are safe, free, and thriving, not controlled, punished, or silenced. We envision communities where accountability is collective, healing is prioritized, and justice means opportunity, not incarceration.

YEAH Philly is a Black-led youth justice organization working to build youth justice infrastructure that moves communities beyond punishment, probation, and incarceration. Through direct advocacy, legal representation, research, organizing, and policy change, we work alongside young people and communities to create approaches to safety and accountability that are more effective, equitable, and developmentally appropriate. YEAH operates at the intersection of healing, advocacy, and research through three interconnected areas:

1. Violent Crime Initiative (VCI): Community-based violence prevention that provides legal representation and court advocacy, individualized case management, employment, and holistic support for teens and young adults most impacted by violence and in the juvenile system for a violent or gun crime. VCI is the model of what real community safety looks like.
2. Juvenile Probation Accountability Coalition (JPAC): A partnership collective between YEAH Philly and The Gault Center working with impacted young people to dismantle juvenile probation and co-designing new systems of accountability rooted in community healing and leadership.
3. Research, Data, and Storytelling: Youth-led research and storytelling that informs the field, creates best practices, documents lived experiences, exposes system harms, and influences public policy.