About Our Programs
ENCOMPASS sparks compassion, personal responsibility and an appreciation of differences by involving teenagers in interactive programs that challenge them to learn from one another. ENCOMPASS believes that young people can be their own most powerful teachers. They can and will influence one another and challenge one another to be compassionate and responsible people.
ENCOMPASS programs are designed to be inclusive, meaning we serve youth of all cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds in the same setting. Unlike many youth agencies, ENCOMPASS consciously and deliberately builds the greatest possible diversity into any given grouping of program participants and staff. This means each program will include youth who are from various racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds. Experience has taught us that young people will thrive in diverse environments, with peers of all backgrounds, where difference can be honestly addressed and perceptions respectfully challenged.
Our programs take place in varied formats. In each one, ENCOMPASS staff create an ideal setting for positive youth development: physical and psychological safety; appropriate structure and limits; supportive relationships; multicultural community; opportunity to belong; positive social norms; support for efficacy and mattering; and opportunities for skill building. Adult and youth staff work together to create the best possible conditions for youth to learn from one another. To learn more about our programs, click on the links below.
Compassion Plays: a touring theatrical program that sparks transformative conversation among audience-participants. Each of the three available plays offers new insights on complex human relations topics.
BRIDGE: a comprehensive youth development and arts program that utilizes visual art to increase self-awareness and foster an appreciation of differences. The program is customized for selected locations and offered as a summer arts program for students from local public and private schools.
Project Spotlight: an experiential program for teenage performing artists that explores stereotypes, prejudice and personal responsibility - and how these topics relate to their experiences as young artists in the greater Los Angeles area. The program culminates with a powerful benefit performance featuring the youth participants.
Creating Bias Free Classrooms: a unique training program that allows teachers and students to practice intervening in a bias-related conflict. Using a highly interactive format, the program uses professional teenage and adult actors to bring to life diversity-related conflicts that commonly arise in today's classroom.
Special Projects: interactive workshops for high school students that combine the most effective youth development practices with the best in human relations programming. Topics addressed include issues of age, culture, class, gender, immigration status, race, religion, language, and sexual orientation.
