Youth Services

KidsTalk is making change in the communities it serves each and every day. Here is more information of how we do just that.

A Second Chance
Presented by KidsTalk Productions, Voices of Tomorrow
Created 2004 and Ongoing

THINK… REACT… JUST LISTEN

Troubled youth in Southern California's juvenile detention centers are some of the most articulate, creative and intelligent human beings you will ever meet. Most want to change their ways, but the reality is, many of them can't. Most of the time, they just don't have the resources or the outreach available to them to do so. Here is where KidsTalk Voices of Tomorrow has stepped in. We have created a new, revolutionary educational/service program called A Second Chance. Within this, we have created a series of educational summits called Voices of Juvenile Hall Changing Their Lives, that not only incorporate a summit held at a juvenile hall facility with youth mentorship, career and community outreach, but so much more. The day-long summits bring together community and educational resources together with juvenile hall youth and provide peer mentoring, career development support, resources for life after they are released and referrals for various educational and service opportunities.

These summits have occurred in conjunction with a video series program aimed at educating young people about the realities of the juvenile justice system and how to avoid going down the wrong path. This series followed youth from their admittance into the "system" to their court proceedings to their juvenile hall stay and finally to their release, documenting their feelings and their messages to others while encouraging them to change their ways by having educational outreach opportunities made available to all students we work with.

The goal of KidsTalk Voices of Juvenile Hall Changing Their Lives, with this project is to continue creating more of these summits through Southern California, across America, and the World. Furthermore, we would like to follow this project up by bringing reformed inmates back to the communities where they committed their crime, to share their story of triumph in overcoming adversity. The idea of an educational and community outreach summit came to us in creating KidsTalk Make A Difference Day. Since the event was such a great success, allowing local universities, community collages and organizations access to juvenile hall, showing our youth the opportunities they have for a better education, most of them never new this was available to them. KidsTalk recently was invited to re-submit a proposal to continue this program indefinitely and, are happy to report that the Los Angeles County Juvenile Courts stand behind us in this new endeavor! Our goal is to spread this message to more and more juvenile centers throughout California and the United States. With this funding and primarily this moral support, the sky's the limit and KidsTalk will make this happen bigger and better for all youth that unfortunately took the wrong road, the best part is, everyone, including the courts, are right there with us for the supportive ride.