Building resilience through community partnerships.

During the pandemic in 2019 our organization as well as so many other vibrant and fully functioning mentoring programs experienced a shutdown in services and many tribulations of life changing events that affected everyone around the globe. Online schooling for youth/teens became challenging showing signs of depression with social media being their only source of entertainment, excitement and opening the door to unfamiliar friend request and followers. As cities and states opened more businesses setting the 6ft rule teens were allowed to go out and breath the fresh air, meet up with friends and or new people from social media which created an issue of many missing teen girls and women of color shared daily across all social media platforms.

Black women and girls are disproportionately affected by violence, trafficking, and systemic neglect, leading to high rates of their disappearance, and placing them at greater risk for homicide. Although they make up a significant portion of missing person cases in the U.S., their stories often go underreported and unnoticed by national media and law enforcement. According to the National Crime Information Center, in 2022, of the 271,493 girls and women reported missing, 97,924, or over 36 percent, were Black, despite the fact that Black women and girls comprised only 14 percent of the U.S. female population at the time. https://www.ojp.gov/safe-communities/inside-perspectives/shining-light-on-the-crisis-of-missing-or-murdered-black-women-and-girls-in-the-united-states

New in Spring 2025 our team will roll out "The Dignity Project and our slogan is (She is our Priority)" This champaign is to assist families with resources needed for their runaway, missing teen girls and women. LADE organization are currently seeking to partner with other organizations that share core values and visions aligning all members toward common objectives for teen girls in our communities.

President/CEO

Stephanee Strickland