When Audrey Stubbs was a child, she couldn’t wait to turn 12, because that was the age when she would be allowed to start babysitting. At that young age, she sensed what she knows today: “Working with people, with youth in particular, is my pillar—where I get my strength from,” she says.

It was January 2010, the height of the opioid epidemic. Not long before, Michelle Overstreet and her husband Jeff had returned to their home state of Alaska from Arizona, seeking a safer environment for their young daughter. Overstreet was working at an alternative high school as a graduation-prep coach.
 

Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), a NeighborWorks network member in Los Angeles, California, soon will complete the first year of scheduled construction for its upcoming multipurpose community center and sports complex, the Paul I. Terasaki Budokan.

By the time Abigail "Abby" Pogatshnik was just 4 years old, she already had lived in several homes in and around Bismarck, North Dakota. Her mother, Lisa, divorced Abby's father when Abby was just 10 months old. Though she escaped an abusive marriage, Lisa found herself in a new struggle — being a single mom with three young daughters to support.

"It is a happy talent to know how to play." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It's making me better at school," says Lashayla, age 11, who is one of the many youth resident members engaged in after-school programs across 18 of Mutal Housing's communities.