In 1995, Isis Sapp-Grant MSW founded the Youth Empowerment Mission Inc. in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn to work with communities to end gang violence. Initially, Mrs. Sapp-Grant, a former youth gang member, conducted violence prevention workshops with adolescent girls in juvenile detention facilities and trained students and community organizers about effective violence prevention strategies. It was her work with adolescent female offenders that compelled her to launch the Blossom Program for Girls(Blossom) in 1998– a community based program that seeks to “provide a safe, healing and nurturing environment for girls ages 11-21 who were involved or at high-risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system. Blossom was the first community-based diversion and alternative to incarceration program that was specifically designed—in terms of culture and identity—for Black girls and other girls of color and LGBTQ youth.
Blossom 