At Risk Youth
James and Amy Gandy, the founders of Hands and Feet Foundation, Have a special place in their hearts for the children being raised up in disfuctional homes.
We started our ‘at risk’ youth rescue program in 2015 in Sweet Water Community in Jacksonville, Florida, a very distress neighborhood. We adopted around 25+ kids and their families and siblings; they were the most disadvantaged kids in our community having big problems in the school and in the neighborhood, also having problems with police and their families. These youth were from seven years old to seventeen years old.
Within one year, and tons of behind the scenes work with these kids under God’s provision and protection, we saw God change the worst in the neighborhood to the very best in the neighborhood. These kids were changing D and F’s on school report cards to A’s and B’s across the board. With a few adult volunteers, several teenagers and a dinner every night and thirty-six field trips these families became part of our family.
As we watch God do miracles in our lives, some have gone on to be in in college and the military, and have become nurses, mothers, fathers, community servants and the like.
Six years into this effort now we are in six juvenile prisons. We work with the new kids in the neighborhood, run away kids, drug addicts, young pregnant girls, gang affiliated teens and the like. We plant gardens, paint murals, restore and build green houses and help them develop coping skills. We take these kids on many field trips if they are doing good as a reward for their efforts.
We have formed our own Boy scout troop. We do job training and take them on ship tours, college tours, museum tours, alligator tours, museums, baseball park visits, we teach them swimming skills, horseback riding and so much more.
All this is done while proclaiming the name of Jesus.
