Youths For Excellence is a registered charity and non-profit organisation headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica that serves inner-city youth sitting their exit examinations in grades four to six. It was incorporated on June 16, 2015 by Founder Jénine Shepherd out of a need to try to bridge the gaps in education caused by societal inequities. In 2021, the non-profit was incorporated in Delaware, USA.

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Jénine Shepherd has served as the Executive Director since our incorporation and has been crucial in establishing our strategic partnerships with governments across the Caribbean region and crafting our proposals for education improvement across the region.

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At the core of our organisation is the idea that a holistic approach to education reform is needed. The future demands that every child gets a whole systems approach to closing the gaps in education– families must be included in the system change. We accomplish this by providing tutoring  food, healthcare and school supplies to inner-city children as well as opportunities for personal development and career advancement for their families. 

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The objects for which Youths For Excellence Limited is established are:

 

a)   To work towards the improvement of the literacy and numeracy skills of the children in lower performing schools located in inner city communities with the intention of giving students the opportunity to excel academically and to build necessary self-esteem, thus contributing in the long term to the social and economic fibre of global societies.

 

b) To provide for the overall health of the targeted community as a means of ensuring greater retention of academic material and achievement of academic improvement and/or excellence.

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To date, Youths For Excellence Limited has assisted 12,000 children and is based in the USA and 7 Caribbean countries: Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda.  Most notably, we have cemented our organization as an authority on education in Jamaica and have been called on to champion collaboration across the region in discussions around the future of education. Our projects have varied in size from 36 students to 2000 students at once. Notably, we held our inaugural Back to School Event at the Office of the Prime Minister in Jamaica on August 29, 2019, where 36 students were each provided with tablets, comprehensive health checkups, 3 month's food supply, 2 month's bus passes, school supplies, textbooks and e-learning logins to practice for PEP. The organisation has collaborated on projects with all seven Ministries of Education, UNESCO, United Nations Development Programme, the Caribbean Development Bank and 24 corporate and government sponsors: JUTC, KFC, Seprod, GraceKennedy, Sansgter's Book Stores, Sygnus and Sagicor, among them.

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We have been featured in Barbados Today, Barbados Advocate, The Morning Brew (Trinidad and Tobago), The Now Morning Show (Trinidad and Tobago), Jamaica Observer, JIS, CVM at Sunrise, Smile Jamaica, Caribbean Life News and so many other national news outlets across the region and in the USA.

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Our Founder is the recipient of the Prime Minister's Youth Award for Excellence in the category of Nation Building (2018) from the Jamaican Prime Minister, the Most Honourable Andrew Holness, ON, MP, QC. She is also the recipient of the Diana Award (2021). This award, in honour of Princess Diana of Wales, is the most prestigious award in the world a young person can receive for social and humanitarian work. Jénine has been named amongst the Caribbean's 30 Under 30 Changemakers by Ignite Caribbean (2021) and serves as an Ambassador for the "I Believe" Initiative by the Governor General of Jamaica, His Excellency, Sir Patrick Allen, The Governor-General of Jamaica (The official representative of Her Majesty the Queen).