At CADCA’s 25º Annual Mid-Year Training Institute, we learned about a program that demonstrated what youth development and emergency preparedness can look like when they’re woven together.
During the session titled “Youth Responders: From Crisis to Career,” Michelle Williams described how her vision was born from the loss of her brother Kevin K. Jemison. After losing him to an accidental overdose, Williams channeled it into action. She co-founded A Hand Up Resources and Community Outreach in Kansas City, Missouri, working alongside the Missouri Department of Aging, local coalitions, and community partners with a goal to save lives.
Although they started out by focusing on Narcan training and overdose response education, they quickly discovered that the drug landscape is changing fast. Xylazine, synthetic opioids, and new substances have complicated overdose response in ways that Narcan alone can’t address. More overdoses now require rescue breathing, CPR, and lay responder intervention. The timing can be a problem since brain damage can begin within minutes without oxygen, but EMS response times in urban areas average 6-7 minutes (and 13-14 in rural communities). Families, friends, or bystanders are often first on the scene.
That’s when the Youth Responders program became strategic. Williams took something the program was already doing (CPR and first aid training) and built something bigger around it.
The program also recognized something else happening in the community. Substance use was a crisis, but people were also struggling with homelessness, unemployment, trauma, poverty, and disconnection. What tied many of these struggles together was transition periods, like the jump from middle school to high school, high school to adulthood, reentry after incarceration, or workforce uncertainty. These moments ask fundamental questions: Who am I now? Where do I belong? What comes next? When people don’t get answers, they may cave to unhealthy solutions.
The Youth Responders program addressed that and became more than solely emergency training. The life-saving certification became a resume builder, a first workforce credential, and above all else, a confidence reset. Young people were learning CPR, but they were also gaining something they could point to that proved what they were capable of. They left the training feeling responsibility, leadership, preparedness, and a genuine sense of community contribution.
For young people reentering society after incarceration, they often start from nothing. No work history, low confidence, and the pressure to provide for their families immediately. A low-wage job might not be enough to interrupt survival patterns, but this quick, legitimate credential gave them a reason to think differently about themselves.
Williams described how the program partnered with KC Transit Authority to create jobs that young people could be proud of, positions that required conflict resolution skills and trusted judgement on public transit. The positions went beyond employment; they gave dignity to the people being hired.
The final question from the session stuck with us: How many people in your community can one program reach? For coalitions across the country, this program offers a model worth studying.
