Our Story

YouthBuild was founded by Dorothy Stoneman in East Harlem, New York. The movement has grown to impact thousands of young people around the world with positive youth development, education, and workforce readiness and career training.

In 1978, Dorothy Stoneman asked the young people she worked with as a teacher and organizer in East Harlem, New York, how they would change their community if they had adult support.

“We’d rebuild the houses. We’d take empty buildings back from the drug dealers and eliminate crime,” they answered.

By combining love, construction, leadership training, and education, Stoneman founded YouthBuild and created the core elements of its model as her fledgling organization renovated an abandoned tenement building in East Harlem.

In 1984, Stoneman and a coalition of youth-serving programs in New York City orchestrated YouthBuild’s expansion citywide. In 1988, YouthBuild began to spread nationally, and in 1990, YouthBuild USA was formed as a support center for the movement, with Stoneman as its CEO.

A federal funding stream for YouthBuild programs was established in 1992 through bipartisan legislation championed by former Senator John Kerry (D-MA). The YouthBuild grant program was later moved from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Department of Labor, where it remains today.

By 2001, YouthBuild laid the groundwork for its international expansion, starting in South Africa, and eventually growing to several more countries. In 2007, YouthBuild International (YBI) was created to respond to the growing need to champion opportunity youth around the world, and YouthBuild International became a division of YouthBuild USA.

Stoneman was succeeded by John Valverde in January 2017 after leading and growing the YouthBuild movement for almost 40 years. Valverde became the first previously incarcerated individual to lead a nonprofit with a global mission.

Today, the organization’s domestic and international work are fully integrated under the sole umbrella of YouthBuild Global. The name change to YouthBuild Global, unveiled in 2024, affirmed its service to an expansive network of YouthBuild programs around the world. From training, technical assistance, capacity building, and innovative program enhancements to leadership development, sustainability, and advocacy, YouthBuild Global serves as a convener, collaborator, and catalyst for the entire YouthBuild movement.

The original program, Youth Action YouthBuild, remains in the same storefront in East Harlem, having created hundreds of permanently affordable housing units and helped thousands of young people transform their lives.