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Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning person cannot operate a non-profit with no financial and volunteer support. Some of the things we want to do for the youth in our community include:

Develop Safer Neighborhoods. Your children cannot play safely in the streets today; anything could happen, from getting snatched by strangers to getting shot to getting run over by drunks. Sometimes their playgrounds are fouled by broken glass or needles. All these things can be fixed if the neighborhood comes together to fix it. Safer and friendlier neighborhoods need office work to organize, seeds and trash bags to clean up parks and playgrounds, and cash for maintenance.

Get Kids Involved . Parents are busy, and single parents have hardly enough time for working and sleeping, let alone watching their kids as closely as they need to. Whether we like it or not, the younger kids learn from the older kids. So we organize the older kids to teach the younger kids. Let them mentor the little ones in after school programs, on field trips, teaching them how to use computers. After school programs need staff, space, computers, furnishings, books, and sports equipment.

Improve Our Schools . They aren't adequately funded. We all know it. Instead of complaining about it and waiting for years to convince someone to budget the cash, get the budget approved, and then find ways to spend the money (ways, by the way, that we probably didn't want!) the Joseph Adetula Foundation wants to raise money for field trips, for new sports equipment in schools, and for all the extras that our schools need to give our kids a quality education. Improving schools means paying for equipment of all sorts, admission prices for field trips, buying new computers, and sometimes paying for new staff.

Show Kids Their Futures. They already know the bad one; they see it every day. We need to teach them about internships they can do in school, about community service, about college opportunities. We have hundreds of leaders in our youth. We need to take those leaders and show them what they can really do with their lives. If you can turn the leaders around, the other kids will follow. Showing youth the future requires you: your hard work and your example.

Substance Abuse, Pregnancy, and Violence Prevention . These are the things our youth know. We need to teach them to turn away from this life, and turn toward the positive things we're introducing them to throughout our program. Older children can participate in peer mentoring for younger children - show them what not to do. Teaching, after all, is one of the best ways to learn something.

Do you believe in all these things? Do you want to show our young people how they can turn things around for themselves? Of course you do. With your time, your generous check, and your in-kind donations, you can help us give our kids a new life. No more Joseph Adetulas. Only kids that grow into what Joseph could have been.

Joseph Adetula Foundation