True to Its Grassroots

Many nonprofits like to throw around the word grassroots to describe their organizations, but few do the term justice as much as Freedom 4 Youth does. In 2008, Billi Jo Starr, a Santa Barbara High School alumna who has since earned her PhD in Education from UCSB, brought a Toastmasters curriculum to Los Prietos Boys Camp, a juvenile detention facility in Santa Barbara.

Starr partnered with the youths themselves, tapping into their innate leadership abilities. They learned to speak in public; they overcame their fears of sharing personal stories. The Toastmasters initiative blossomed and eventually culminated in 2011 with the creation of Freedom 4 Youth as an official nonprofit organization. Shortly after, in 2012, the F4Y Advocates were formed, a campus organization where UCSB students mentor youth who have been incarcerated or impacted by the criminal justice system.

For nearly a decade, Freedom 4 Youth was kept alive by volunteer support. It didn’t even have a real facility until 2019 and it took until 2020, 12 years since the first Toastmasters sessions, for Dr. Starr to even earn an official salary. “We have been as youth-led and as grassroots as any nonprofit can get, running entirely on volunteer work,” says Development Director Dylan Griffith.

The nonprofit’s persistence has more than paid off. Their leadership program, an evolved and custom curated form of the Toastmasters curriculum, still runs every Tuesday and remains the core of the organization’s work. Today, Freedom 4 Youth counts more than 2,000 alumni who were previously incarcerated who have benefited from its leadership and education programs. This year, it is quickly outgrowing its current facility located across Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital. “2021 has really been a breakout year for us in terms of our capacity,” Griffith says.

One of the reasons for the organization’s effectiveness is that 100 percent of its staff has been impacted or directly involved in the justice system themselves in some way. Further, they empower the alumni of their program to mentor the youth who are currently entrenched in the system. Collectively, they call themselves “credible messengers.”

“There’s an immediate connection,” says Griffith, who himself was involved for several years in the justice system as a youth. “You’re on an immediate form of shared ground with that person that you can then use as a stepping stone to continue building depth in a relationship. We always operate from a relationship framework.”