Emerald Youth

Emerald Youth Foundation started in the late 1980’s by the Emerald Avenue United Methodist Church in the Oakwood Park neighborhood with after-school and summer programs. Their mission is “to raise up a large number of urban youth to love Jesus Christ and become effective leaders to help renew their communities”. Their programs have grown to serve around twenty-four hundred Knoxville urban youth through a variety of programs. Now, the Emerald Youth Foundation links a variety of churches together to spread their urban ministry. They have the JustLead program provides kids training, mentoring, and resources. For the older kids, they have ACT prep, interviewing skill and out of town trips. Emerald Youth also has a fellows’ programs that picks about less than 20 kids to have a more intensive experience to develop their leadership skills so that they can become the leaders of their communities one day. They have a mentor much like we do to help guide them through the experience. Another big part of their programs is the varies sports leagues that they have that connects many of the Knoxville kids. They have baseball, basketball, soccer, swim. track, and volleyball. Finally, they launched Emerald Academy which was Knoxville’s first public charter school. It is a K-8 school. They have a really good website that shows all the places where they are located and how you can volunteer. If you want to volunteer and make an impact on children, I think that this would be a great organization to get involved with.