Regional Youth Initiative

The Regional Youth Initiative is a non-profit grass-roots effort committed to providing regional youth with safe, healthy activities and facilities that promote the development of positive attitudes and healthy lifestyles. The Youth Complex will offer a safe, supervised facility for out of school hours, when kids are most at risk. Our caring, trained staff will address the changing needs and issues of children who are becoming young adults, and provide young people with a safe space and the opportunity to make choices, and learn in a creative and supportive environment.

We wish to implement funding for a substance use prevention program that will offer high school students with a sufficient substitute to using drugs and alcohol as well as unhealthy decisions and distractions they face on a daily basis. 

We resolutely believe that you cannot ask young people to say no to drugs and alcohol without giving them something to say yes to. The Aud, and the programming that will exist within it, is that sufficient substitute our young people can say yes to. 

We need funding immediately to implement evidence-based prevention programming that will directly affect the lives of youth in Macomb County. The money will be used for materials directly related to programming. None of these funds will be allocated for administrative costs! 

Words cannot describe what this means to us at the Regional Youth Initiative. Our two Directors, Kenny Spear and Andrew Fortunato, are both in long-term recovery from alcoholism and addiction. They have devoted their lives to lifting others, especially young people, out of the depths from which they came so that no one else has to experience the hopelessness, helplessness, and loss that Kenny and Andrew have. 

We are so extremely grateful for anyone who is willing to give to our cause. Donating to the Regional Youth Initiative is an investment in the future of the lives of the youth we will serve; an investment in the future of our community. 

Thank you in advance for anything you are able to give. We give our word that there is no length we will not go to in order to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of the youth in our communities.