What Is Youth Alive?

Youth Alive (youthalive.org) is a community-based violence prevention, intervention, and healing agency based in Oakland, California. It is not part of city government and not a police department; it describes itself as "of and by the community," and its wraparound services are always free. If you are trying to understand what the organization does, who it serves, or how its programs fit together, the four areas below are the core of its work.

The four areas of work

Youth Alive organizes its programs under four headings: prevention, intervention, healing, and advocacy.

Prevention: stopping violence before it starts

Teens on Target trains high school students to educate their peers about violence prevention, mediate conflicts, and advocate with elected officials and the public for safer communities. This is a peer-education model: the people delivering the message are the same age as the people receiving it.

Intervention: mediating conflicts and defusing tensions

This is the largest cluster of programs:

• Violence Interrupters — staff described as "guardians of peace" who navigate tension in the community, work to extinguish individual and group conflicts, and stop violence before it starts.
• Caught in the Crossfire — Intervention Specialists meet survivors of violence at their hospital bedside and provide practical and logistical services aimed at supporting healing, discouraging retaliation, and helping survivors return to their communities.
• Hometown Heroes Fellowship — a workforce development initiative that builds the next generation of credible messengers and community leaders in community violence prevention.
• Pathways — connects at-promise youth with experienced Intervention Specialists for post-release services including educational assistance, legal aid, employment support, mentoring, and life skills training.

Healing: moving forward after loss

• Khadafy Washington Project — serves nearly 100% of families of Oakland homicide victims with financial, emotional, and practical support after losing a loved one to violence.
• Counseling Services — healing-centered individual and group counseling for people impacted by trauma and violence.

Advocacy: changing policy to change lives

Youth Alive draws on 30 years of experience addressing violence and serving victims and survivors of crime to develop policy solutions at the local, statewide, and national level. Its advocacy work is centered on the experiences of its youth, clients, and staff, and it creates platforms to capture and share those stories so policymakers, community leaders, and supporters understand the human impact behind the policy.

How the pieces fit together

The logic is a continuum: prevent violence where possible, interrupt it when it is imminent, support people after it occurs, and change the policies that shape the conditions in the first place.

What to keep in mind

• It is a community organization, not a government agency. Youth Alive explicitly distinguishes itself from city government and the police, which matters if you are looking for a service that operates independently of those systems.
• Services are described as free. The site states its wraparound services are always free; no pricing or payment details are listed.
• It is Oakland-focused but not Oakland-limited. Programs serve Oakland, while advocacy work extends to the state and national level.
• Some programs have specific entry points. Caught in the Crossfire works through hospital bedside contact, and Pathways serves youth after release — so the route into a program depends on the situation, not a single general intake.

If you want to know more about a specific program, the site's "Our Programs" section links to a dedicated page for each one.