Project Background: With long-term support from our supporters, Reconcile New Orleans has established a sustainable model for helping disadvantaged youth achieve career success. Café Reconcile now has a 15-year track record of success, 1,500 program alumni, 100 active partnerships, and more than 400 requests to support similar efforts in other communities around the world.
The Need: Tulane University’s Cowen Institute in 2014 found that New Orleans has 30,000 disconnected youth – the largest per capita population of young people, ages 16-24, who are not in school and not working of any major metropolitan area in the nation. Yet, this is a national issue. In the United States, 6.7 million youth, ages 16-24, are not in school and not working. These young people cost our nation’s taxpayers $93 billion per year in lost tax revenues and increased cost for social services.
The Opportunity: Café Reconcile has a model that can be expanded to address the needs of tens of thousands of these disconnected young people in communities across the country, but we currently lack the capacity for significant expansion.