We build futures and communities through affordable housing and economic development programs.
We create more possibilities for youth by giving them the educational and professional opportunities needed to thrive.
We pave a better way forward for youth and their families by creating a foundation built on love and empathy.
We remove unconscious barriers for youth facing mental health challenges, ensuring they always have a place to turn to.
Why Handy builds workforce readiness starting at age ten, and what happens when young people discover their worth is something they earn.
I was born on a distant shore, in a place starved of opportunity for those of lesser means. And yet the idea of the Americas, as I understood it from far away, was one thing above all else: opportunity. A promise that your starting point did not have to be your destination, no matter the generation you were born into.
I was also raised on a simple creed. From the sweat of your brow you shall eat. Hard work equals a better destiny. Those words shaped me, and over time they shaped a conviction I carry into my work every day: the values a community attaches to work, directly and indirectly, end up dictating the status of that community.
That conviction is the reason Handy exists in the form it does.
Teaching the intangible
Handy Youthbuild Students on construction job site with DPR Construction.
At Handy, we teach the intangible principles of sweat equity, the understanding that human value in society is something cultivated, not handed over. And we have watched this philosophy show up in the educational lives of our youth. The mindset behind earning the grade directly shapes the quality of the grade. When a young person believes their effort means something, their effort begins to mean more.
Our youth development and workforce strategies are rooted in stoic principles of self-worth and a strong culture of working vigorously to demonstrate your worth in the world. Because no one is born with an established value statement. As Locke so eloquently placed it, we are born with rights, but value is something we earn.
So we empower a “no quitter allowed” work ethic, and we celebrate the completion of a goal-focused journey. Inside a care management framework where there is no failing, only learning, it becomes natural to guide our youth toward Thomas Paine’s vision of an independence established by earnest work. We begin instilling this human-value-in-work philosophy early, with youth as young as ten years old.
“No one is born with an established value statement. We are born with rights, but value is something we earn.”
Why we start so young
There is an urgency to starting early, and it is not abstract. The same young energy we seek to direct toward purpose is energy that chronic, toxic community crime recruiters are working to capture. They understand the strategy too. They know how to direct the energy of the young into a pattern. We have simply chosen a different pattern, and we refuse to cede that ground.
For the past decade, every year, we have guided our youth toward the seven highest-demand industries in our economy. Our young people move toward that vision with clear eyes, understanding the work it genuinely takes to excel along a career pathway.
What a unified approach to the value of work produces
95% high school graduation rate
78% educational credential completion rate
72% unsubsidized employment rate
Less than 1% recidivism rate
These numbers are not the goal. They are the evidence.
They prove that a focused mindset, exercising a valued approach to work and met with sweat equity, builds stronger, more purpose-driven communities.
That is the work. And it is working.
From the classroom to the career: Handy youth with Publix Human Resources Team.
The numbers on this page tell you what we do. They cannot show you what it looks like when a young person realizes their effort is worth something.
If you are interested in this kind of work, come see it. Sit in on a session, walk a job site with our youth, meet the staff who show up every day. Let’s have a real conversation, I will make the time personally. Reach out to me at kbrown@handyinc.org. Whether you give, hire, or simply believe in this, let’s build a future mindset together.
