Growing Kings

Growing Kings is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, founded in 2009 in direct response to the alarming number of adolescent males failing in various aspects of their lives. The idea behind the organization’s approach to male youth development involved identifying and filling the gaps that existed in traditional mentoring by providing young people with consistent, long-term support and delivering culturally relevant, structured programming. Our organizational model introduces innovative programming that supports urban male youth through their growth and maturation into young men of integrity and high-character. We have found that mentoring is at its best when it provides ongoing feedback, grabs and sustains participants’ attention, and has appropriate and adaptive levels of rigor. Growing Kings serves to support students through our school-based and juvenile diversion programming, and has developed into an industry leading organization through our commitment to improving the educational and societal outcomes of underserved male youth. Growing Kings operates with a mission to encourage and facilitate critical thinking and positive attitudes of underserved male youth through systemic and targeted enrichment, research, and advocacy. Growing Kings targets many of the issues plaguing today’s underserved male youth through our Journey of a King and The King in Me programs, and our advocacy efforts. The organization’s impact is realized through previously failing students who now attend area magnet high schools; the decrease in juvenile arrests and recidivism rates; students no longer being affiliated with drugs and gangs, and other recorded qualitative data. Quantitatively, the organization’s success is recognized through in-school improvements in academic performance, reductions in negative behavioral occurrences, and increases in attendance.