Year 1
Hope
Emotional stability, self-worth, identity, and belonging.
Explore HOPE →About us
Every young heart carries a brighter future.
HOME-WORK Youth Empowerment ignites unbreakable hope in inner-city youth hearts, affirms their worth, unleashes creative fire, and forges lifelong pathways to rise, lead, and thrive beyond any circumstance.
Our story
A welcoming place to become more.
Young people in Orlando's inner city face poverty, insecurity, limited access, gender inequities, family challenges, and a post-graduation void that can dim self-belief and block opportunity.
Traditional programs can offer fragmented mentorships that fade. HOME-WORK invests deeply in 20 high schoolers each year, blending mandatory therapy, creative talent-building, and real-world execution over 3.5 years.
We believe a young person is more than the barriers around them. With steady relationships and the right room to practice, they can become a beacon of change for generations.
Why Orlando / Parramore
Rooted in the neighborhood. Connected to the city.
Parramore holds deep history, creativity, and community wisdom. We build with the neighborhood — connecting youth to trusted adults, Orlando employers, creative professionals, families, and school counselors.
20 youth.
3.5 years.
A lifetime of lift.
Our small-cohort model makes space for the whole young person — identity, mental health, creative expression, leadership, and a supported first step into work.
The four pillars
A steady path from healing to opportunity.
Year 2
Purpose
Discover talents and develop marketable skills.
Explore PURPOSE →Year 3
Leadership
Communication, accountability, and confidence.
Explore LEADERSHIP →Year 4
Execution
Paid internships, employment opportunities, and career support.
Explore EXECUTION →Our team
Professionals who stay in the room.
01
Youth mentors
Trusted adults who walk with students through every transition.
02
Licensed therapist
A foundation of emotional safety, healing, and self-worth.
03
Creative specialists
Photography, videography, graphic design, and writing professionals.
04
Community partners
Employers and neighbors who make opportunity real.
MEET OUR BOARD
The People Behind the Mission.
HOME-WORK was built by people who know the road our youth are walking, because they walked it too.
Joshua Blackburn
President
A Los Angeles native, Joshua Blackburn grew up surrounded by gang violence, substance abuse and dysfunction. The turning point came in a single conversation with a dean at Compton Leadership Academy. That conversation planted the first seed of a brighter future, and it never left him.
A creative talent in music and craftsmanship, Joshua decided to do for other young people what someone once did for him. He combined his passion for empowering kids like himself with his gift for creativity and started HOME-WORK Youth Empowerment.
His vision was simple and ambitious: an after-school home where young people feel at home while learning the value of working on themselves, in their communities and in their careers.
“I want to give a kid what someone once gave me: a reason to believe it can be different.”
Los Angeles, CAMusic & CraftsmanshipFounder, HOME-WORK
Jazzmin Blackburn
Vice President
A Los Angeles native, Jazzmin Blackburn grew up in the same cultural environment as Joshua, in a neighborhood where creativity was often the only doorway out. She found her own way through it early, and she has never forgotten what that gift meant to a young person trying to be seen.
Creative writing, music and a long list of creative endeavors are her craft. What sets her apart is how she carries it: a motherly nature and presence that makes a stranger feel at home within minutes. That instinct is not a side note to her work. It is her life's work.
At HOME-WORK, she is perfectly suited to give young people the kind of love she did not yet know at their age. She is the warmth in the room and the reason many students keep coming back.
“Every kid deserves one person who makes them feel at home before they feel ready.”
Los Angeles, CACreative Writing & MusicVice President