Changing Biographies

As we close out the year, Youth Advocate Programs (YAP™), Inc. looks forward to 2025, when we will celebrate the agency’s 50^th anniversary. Tom Jeffers founded the agency in 1975 when Pennsylvania ordered the release of youth from Camp Hill Prison. YAP would grow to become the premier national nonprofit providing community-based services as an alternative to youth incarceration and other out-of-home residential placements. Principles of our evidence-based youth and family wraparound services model are also at the foundation of our Community-Based Safety programming that reduces violence among youth and adults who are at the highest risk of engagement.

Our 50^th Anniversary events will honor current and former YAP leaders and highlight our program participants, alumni, staff and our community partners – nonprofits, neighborhood-based businesses, foundations, corporations, researchers and the many workforce development, housing, education, re-entry, mental health and other continuum-of-care resources that make our work possible.

On November 6th, 2025, we’ll host our inaugural national YAP™ Making Change Happen Summit and Awards Gala in Philadelphia, PA. Two days later, on November 8th, 2025, at our national headquarters in Harrisburg, PA, we’ll continue the celebration with our 50th Anniversary YAP™ Making Change Happen 5k, Walk and Food Truck Brunch.

We invite you to visit the YAP 50th Anniversary website page to learn how you can celebrate with us.

Gary Ivory

President and CEO

Horse Therapy is Among the YAP Tools Empowering

15-Year-Old Smith to Heal and Grow

Charlotte, N.C. – Once a week for two hours 15-year-old Smith visits Shining Hope Farms where he has been learning how to take care of horses and better control his emotions.

“When I’m around them I don’t have to think about what I usually think about. Instead, I think about the horses, what I can do to help the horses and how the horses help me.”

Smith is one of Youth Advocate Programs (YAP™), Inc.’s Mecklenburg County Youth Justice Program participants whose Advocates have connected them to an equine skills group through the generosity of the horse farm. An alternative to youth incarceration and other out-of-home residential placements, YAP hires and trains neighborhood-based staff Advocates and other employees to empower program participants by helping them see their strengths and connecting them and their families with individualized tools to meet their economic, educational, and emotional goals.

YAP Mecklenburg County Youth Justice program participant Smith during his weekly session at Shining Hope Farms.

“These activities and engagement also assist with social skills and development along with patience and anger management,” said YAP Mecklenburg County Program Director Hope Knuckles-Perks. “Smith has overcome his fear of horses and in this specific situation, it has helped retrain his brain to develop a more positive association with whatever has been triggering his fear.”

Since the YAP Mecklenburg County Youth Justice Program started in 2019, it has served approximately 135 young people and their families.