Our Mission

The Resilience Advocacy Project works to end intergenerational poverty by using innovative advocacy and education strategies that build resilience – the ability to bounce back from adversity – in low-income young people. Our vision is that one day all young people will have access to the resources, supports, and opportunities necessary to maximize their potential and achieve their dreams.

RAP’s mission and vision are rooted in a belief that all young people are inherently resilient. That is, we believe that when given the right tools, low-income young people have the ability to succeed educationally and professionally, build healthy families, and obtain financial security. Young people who falter do so not because of innate flaws, but rather because of the lack of preventive supports and opportunities that ensure their healthy development.
 

Our Values

The mission, goals, and strategies of the Resilience Advocacy Project are guided by four core values. We believe that it is critical to:

• Nurture children’s potential to succeed:  All children have an inherent potential to succeed. Legal advocacy for young people should aim to maximize access to the critical resources that nurture this potential;

• Ensure justice for all children: A core promise of a just society is that all children, irrespective of income, have an equal opportunity to live out their potential. The law can and must level the playing field so that all children have access to critical resources that enable them to live out their potential;

• Advance innovative and collaborative approaches to solving entrenched problems: Solving entrenched problems, like breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty, requires that lawyers think in innovative and collaborative ways about strengthening youth and their families, and about how to create systems that protect young people from the crises that can undermine them;

• Respect young people’s agency and voice: All young people should have the opportunity to engage with, and impact, the world around them. All young people want to feel that they are able to make choices about their own futures without having them dictated by society, and that they are able to make the world a better place.