Operation Fresh Start Creates a Village of Support for Youth: A Modern Village for Youth (Part 2 of 2)
Jasmine Banks, deputy director of Empowerment and Strategic Planning at Operation Fresh Start
by Jonathan Gramling
Jasmine Banks, the deputy director for Empowerment and Strategic Initiatives of Operation Fresh Start,
was born and raised in Madison. Banks was raised in the old school way in which the Black community in particular was tight-knit.
“Madison was small enough and we knew everyone,” Banks recalled. “We had a village. And the funny thing is we had a village whether we wanted to belong or not. If you did anything out of line, someone was going to tell your parents.”
And it seemed that there was always someone there for you each step of the way into adulthood. But society has changed where individualism is supreme and the village they belong to is in social media. But there are real life obstacles to overcome. That’s why Banks is working to create a world of relationships that the young people who come through the doors of Operation Fresh Start can take advantage of as they complete their journey to adulthood. It’s about having the right relationships.
“My first car was $6,000,” Banks recalled. “That was a lot of money. And I was lucky enough because I was working at Oscar Mayer at the time and the credit union was in the building. When I went in, the woman said, ‘You have some things to work on with your credit. What we can do before we approve this car loan is let’s give you a consolidation loan to clear up your credit. Once that is done, we’ll talk about a car loan.’ That’s how I got my first car loan.”
Banks emphasized that it’s knowing the right people that counts.
“It’s about building relationships and knowing the right folks,” Banks emphasized. “And the difference between building those relationships as an 18-year-old versus building those relationships at our age. When I was extremely young, shiny things were really cool to me. It didn’t matter what it looked like under the hood. I just needed it to be pretty. For our young people, can we, as an organization, build relationships in the community so that we know that we’re introducing our young people to these folks that they are going to be treated well.”
The foundational program for Operation Fresh Start is its Legacy Program, a long-term developemntal program for youth who have disconnected from their traditional high school.
“They are here to earn their high school diploma from the school they disconnected from,” Banks said. “That’s a 1,000 hour program, a 10-month program if they come every day.”
And then there are less intensive programs designed to help young people become more employable with a teak here and a tweak there.
“Our shortest program is if a young person is involved with our career coach,” Banks said. “The young person is kind of in that stage where, ‘I don’t know what I want to do, but I need to do something.’ They don’t even know where to start. They will meet with our career coach to determine what their likes are. A lot of young people here have skills, but they think they don’t have any. Through a conversation, you can pull them out. They work with our career coach and figure out what it is that they want to do. We’ll work with them from start to finish in terms of what they need. Some young people may only need a resume or an updated resume. Some young people may need help with completing applications and mock interviews.”
And the program helps the young person to see the diamond they have within them and to reveal it so that others see it as well.
“There was a young person at Atwood Arms who liked science,” Banks said. “That turned into that young person now works at Gunderson Funeral Home. And the interesting thing is so if I work with this young person to the point where the young person can apply for a $50 clothing voucher from the Salvation Army. So taking the young person shopping for interview clothes and then building the relationship with Gunderson Funeral Home doing a job shadow or a tour, helping the young person apply for the position and the young person gets the job. The young person went to the person they working with and said they were ready for more duties. The young person took the crematory test and scored 30 percent higher than anyone else who had taken it in that space and is now working as an apprentice.”
And so within a changing society and labor market, how do you prepare young people to pick up the slack in different areas of the job market?
“When I was growing up, funeral homes were the family business,” Banks said. “How do you break into a family business? Your kids did it when it was time for you to retire. How do we immerse our next generation into the community to take over these spaces if they don’t know where to begin. The beautiful thing about our career coach is the coordinator can go anywhere in the community. The young person doesn’t necessarily have to come here if they live on the west side.”
Operation Fresh Start has experienced a lot of growth during the last decade. It moved out of its original space on Winnebago Street and is now located in a former church building on Milwaukee Street. They serve approximately 500 youth per year.
“Our current operating budget for FY 2025-2026 is $7,438,857,” Banks said. “We have 44 staff. That has doubled since I’ve been here. In the old building, we had run out of space where the board room, we had an office that isn’t even this big and we had five staff in there.”
Banks urges people in the community to invest in our youth. They aren’t going to become self-supporting, contributing members of the community without the support they need in critical junctures of their lives.
“I used to tell people when I first started working here, I do this job because I want the young person whom I am serving to be able to buy the house next door to me,” Banks said. “How do you get them to that point where they can do it, keep it and maintain it? You have to have a job and keep a job.”
And so Banks works hard to create that village of support for young people, not in the geographic sense, but in the personal relationship sense.
“There’s a whole village of folks and it’s my responsibility to become that village for our young people because not to say that my path was straight or easy,” Banks said. “But it made it a lot less painless. I bumped my head a lot fewer times because I had the support of a village. And I am here today as a deputy director.”
Jasmine Banks is on a mission at Operation Fresh Start to give young people the support she had as a child. And she hopes you will join her.
For more information about Operation Fresh Start or to get involved, email Jasmine Banks at jbanks@operationfreshstart.org.