Larkin Street Youth Services

Larkin Street Youth Services is San Francisco's leading provider of services to the estimated 5,700 youth who find themselves without a safe place to call home each year. The full spectrum of care provided includes twenty-five programs at thirteen San Francisco sites. The organization's robust Youth Arts Program-launched with its founding in 1984-operates at drop-in centers and other facilities throughout the Larkin Street network. This program gives youth easy access to workshops in art forms ranging from vocal arts and studio production to piano and spoken word. With a first-time grant from the Performing Arts Program in 2007, the Youth Arts Program was able to hire an arts program counselor to support the program manager and to increase its number of teaching artists. This resulted in the provision of more than twenty-four workshops and events each week, reaching more than 550 unduplicated at-risk youth in the last year alone. Evaluation and monitoring have identified the Youth Arts Program as an active entry point into Larkin Street's services for the hardest-to-reach populations, including transgender homeless youth. During the next grant period, the organization plans to offer more than 500 workshops annually, provide more opportunities for youth to perform, and continue to seek additional funding for the program, now solely supported by the Hewlett Foundation's Performing Arts Program.