Philadelphia County, Pa. – In the early 1990s, Germantown High School senior Phaedra Anderson faced attempted murder for jumping a girl with a shoe.
“I was in the street, getting into fights a lot and shoplifting,” Anderson said. I didn’t really have a strong support system at home. My home environment was horrible.”
A judge lowered her charges, put her on house arrest for a year and sent her to Youth Advocate Programs (YAP™), Inc., in Philadelphia where she was connected with a neighborhood-based Advocate who supported and believed in her.
“My Advocate came by at least a few times a week and would help me with my homework and encourage me,” Anderson said. “I did not have any discipline or self-control, but she saw the good in me. I wasn’t a bad child, I just needed to be redirected.”
YAP is a national nonprofit in 34 states and Washington, D.C. that provides community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, residential care, and group home foster placements. The agency partners with public systems to provide individual and family wraparound and behavioral health services as an alternative to out-of-home placement. YAP also uses its unique wraparound services approach known as YAPWrap™ to help cities curb community violence.
“I thank God for the judge’s mercy and for advocating for me when I couldn’t advocate for myself,” Anderson said. “I was facing attempted murder charges without a lawyer. I had a public defender who didn’t care about throwing a little Black girl under the bus. I could have just now been getting out of prison at my age. I could have spent my life in prison for a mistake.”
YAP neighborhood based-Advocates support program participants by connecting them and their parents or guardians and other family members with individualized economic, emotional and educational tools. Anderson said her Advocate attended her prom, cheered her on, showed up for her, and made an overall investment in her in well-being.
With the help of her Advocate, Anderson finished high school on time by going to summer school, night school and attending school during the day. Anderson said after completing the YAP program, she went to college, but struggled in early adulthood, before finally settling down and leaving her past behind her.
“I did go to college but then I found myself right back in the street life and I was in the same environment,” she added. “I was selling drugs. I was involved in shootouts. I was throwing my life a way. The last shootout I was involved in, I decided would be my last.”
Anderson said during that time, some of her friends ended up stripping, prostituting, selling drugs or have been in-and-out of prison. Anderson, now 47, is a minister, advocate for homeless women and children, and writer; is thankful for another chance.
“I get to speak to young girls about making the right decisions. I am what I didn’t have as a young woman and little girl,” Anderson said. “I wouldn’t have had the ability to change my life around had I been punished differently. I am not the person that I was then. I am not that person now.”
Anderson said it takes a village to support youth and she owes a lot to her YAP Advocate as well as the judge who reduced her charges.
“I am grateful and thankful that this program is still going strong,” she said about YAP. “YAP truly blessed my heart. If I could tell young girls anything, it’s that if you make a mistake try to make it in pencil and not pen. Be mindful of the influences around you and find God early.”
For more information on YAP, visit yapinc.org.