Keynote: Dorothy Stoneman - YouthBuild USA

Dorothy Stoneman is founder and president of YouthBuild USA, the national intermediary and support center for 226 YouthBuild programs nationwide, and chairperson of the National YouthBuild Coalition of 1,000 member organizations. 

In YouthBuild programs, low-income youth who left high school without a diploma build housing for homeless and low-income people while they earn their own GED or diploma in a supportive context that builds positive values through community service and leadership development. Since the YouthBuild Coalition succeeded in getting YouthBuild authorized and funded as a federal program in 1993, over 76,000 youth have rebuilt over 17,000 units of affordable housing in America’s poorest communities.  One thousand organizations have applied to the government to bring YouthBuild to their communities.
 
Stoneman joined the Civil Rights Movement in 1964, became a public school teacher in 1965, and spent the next 24 years in East Harlem, New York, teaching and developing community-based schools, youth programs, housing projects, and grassroots coalitions designed to engage youth and their parents in community development and to increase public support for community-based programs. She was founder of the first YouthBuild program in 1978 and served as its director for ten years before orchestrating its replication nationwide. There are now 226 YouthBuild programs in 42 states, and enormous international interest in replicating this concept in developing nations, with partners already in motion in South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Central America, Scotland, and Israel.

Stoneman has a bachelor’s degree in History and Science from Harvard University, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Bank Street College of Education. She was awarded the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2007, the John Gardner Annual Leadership Award from the Independent Sector in 2000, and a MacArthur (“genius”) Fellowship in 1996.  She served as a founding board member of Youth Service America, founding co-chair of the Ford Foundation’s Leaders for a Changing World, and founding co-chair of the Campaign for Youth. In 2007 she served on the Task Force to End Poverty of the Center for American Progress and is a Trustee of America’s Promise: The Alliance for Youth. She is married to John Bell, vice president of training and leadership development at YouthBuild USA, lives in Massachusetts, and has two children and 13 godchildren.