MoCo YSB Receives Grant From Lilly Endowment Inc.

The Montgomery County Youth Service Bureau (YSB) has received a grant of $527,179 from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help expand programming at the YSB.

This expansion of programming will include three components. First, the Youth Service Bureau will be hiring a full-time therapist. This therapist will be a bridge for youth who are on a waiting list for mental health services at our local mental health centers. They will be able to see youth in the gap while they are waiting for longer term services. This program will be free of charge and will serve YSB youth and other community youth as there is availability.

Second, the YSB will be starting a Middle School Alternative School, modeled after the very successful High School Alternative School program YSB already provides. Details of when the Middle School Alternative School will begin will be available at a future date.

Third, the YSB will be starting a boys group mentoring program for middle and high school students. The YSB already has a girls group mentoring program called Inspire. Now YSB will be able to offer this service to boys as well.

These programs are being funded through Lilly Endowment’s initiative, Strengthening Youth Programs in Indiana. The aim of this initiative is to help youth-serving organizations working throughout Indiana improve their abilities to promote the academic, physical and social well-being of young people, ages five through 18.

The goal for these new services is to fill gaps in the continuum of care for our youth. These particular programs were chosen after evaluating the needs of the youth in our community.

Karen Branch, Executive Director of the YSB stated, “We are so grateful to Lilly Endowment for its support of these much-needed programs. Having access to mental health services, educational programming for exceptional needs and mentoring will have a tremendous impact on the health and well-being of our youth. These are programs we have wanted to implement for some time but did not have the funding to move forward. The funding we are being provided for the next three years makes all of this possible.” Branch added, “Lilly Endowment is making a tremendous investment in Montgomery County and across the state of Indiana, and helping to change lives and communities with its support.”

The Montgomery County Youth Service Bureau is one of 187 organizations receiving grants through Strengthening Youth Programs in Indiana.

“Indiana’s youth-serving organizations are crucial to the healthy development of children and youth across the state,’ said Ted Maple, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for education. “The challenges these organizations have faced in meeting the needs of young people in recent years have made their work increasingly difficult. Lilly Endowment is pleased to support their efforts to strengthen programs and serve more youth more effectively.”

Lilly Endowment launched Strengthening Youth Programs in Indiana Initiative in 2022 with an invitational round of grants to nine national youth-serving organizations to help them expand and enhance the work of their Indiana affiliates or chapters.