The Victory Project hopes to create a new campus in West Dayton that could double the number of students it serves and brings its services closer to many current students.
The privately funded nonprofit also is considering offering its services to girls for the first time since its founding.
Located in the Old North Dayton neighborhood, the Victory Project provides afterschool programming and mentoring to “disengaged” male youths.
Most of the program’s current students live in West Dayton, and they do not always have access to convenient and reliable transportation, said Monnie Bush, the group’s founder and CEO.
The organization is interested in a couple of properties in West Dayton and hopes to build and occupy a new campus in that part of the city by late 2022, he said.
“We’re expanding because we generally have a waiting list for our program,” he said. “We want to be able to offer VP to as many students as we can without losing our really focused approach to serving them.”
Founded in 2007, the Victory Project opened its doors two years later at a property on West Fifth Street in downtown Dayton, Bush said.
The nonprofit started with just a dozen students, but it grew and expanded services and moved to its Troy Street location in 2014.
Victory Project now serves up to 60 students — and averages 50 at any given time, Bush said, and the program tries to attract young men in grades 8 to 12 who are not participating in productive extracurricular activities like jobs and sports.
“We want to offer an alternative to the street for these young men,” Bush said, noting that more than 250 people have graduated from the Victory Project.
Depending on funding, the Victory Project may be able to double the number of students it serves with the new West Dayton campus, he said.
Bush also said the group is thinking about offering a girls Victory Project in West Dayton.
The Victory Project is privately funded and does not accept government funding. Donations primarily come from individual community members, businesses, churches and legacy grants.
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