- This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Detroit nonprofit known as The Yunion.

Over the years, this organization has changed the lives of more than 17,000 young people through its prevention programs, workshops, and conferences, which are designed to uplift and empower young people.

The Yunion's anniversary celebration includes a gala and the recent unveiling of a new state-of-the-art Youth Development Center.

Here's my conversation with the founder and CEO Jason Wilson and with Executive Director Nicole Wilson.

So Jason, congratulations on the anniversary this year of The Yunion, 20 years.

Can you give me a sense of how you got this started and what gave you the idea to do it?

The Yunion actually started as a record label because of my background in music.

And in Detroit, I was a part of a rap group called Kaos & Mystro.

We were really popular here.

And to make it real short is that when I finally gave my life over to God, I saw that the music that I was creating prior to that was countering really His mission for my life.

And so that's when I transformed what I was originally doing the music for to something that was more purpose-driven that could help young kids find their way through the darkness instead of helping them stay in it.

And so I started The Yunion Records and then it became a nonprofit when Nicole and I realized that after the music stopped, our kids still needed help.

And that's when we went after our nonprofit status and the rest has been history.

- Yeah, yeah.

Nicole, you're the Executive Director at Yunion.

There are so many groups and organizations in the city that work with young people.

Yunion kind of stands apart as different.

Tell us about some of the things that you guys are doing.

- Well, I think one of the reasons is specifically because of our background in the arts, and so much of what we do is rooted in the arts, rooted from that base vision that Jason created back in 2003.

And so we offer our students, I call them our babies, it's hard for me not to say that, we offer our kids an alternative, right, to counter the negative messaging that they're bombarded with.

And so giving them those technical skillsets in the arts, and technical skillsets in martial arts, and technical skillsets in things like workforce development, but also driving home the message of life skills application.

I call it teaching them how to be good little people.

And so while there are so many wonderful youth-serving organizations in the city, I'm just really proud of the work that The Yunion has been able to do with over 17,000 youth and families in our history of service.

- Yeah, yeah.

Jason, I wanna talk about young people today and the kind of things that you guys are seeing with young people and their needs, which I think are very different than they were five or 10 years ago, but they're even different than they were just three or four years ago 'cause of the pandemic.

And I'm always curious about organizations that work with young people, what they're seeing and what the needs look like now.

- That's a great question.

We were just talking about in The Cave of Adullam just last week how so many of the boys are holding on a lot of pressure.

So you have a 12-year-old boy who has the pressure of a 40-year-old man.

- Wow.

- So when you have social media, when... Like, Stephen, when we went to school, we left whatever happened at school at school.

Now, it follows them because of their phones and social media.

And I've had boys...

I would ask them do some of the simplest training techniques.

And because they feel this pressure to perform that they can't make a mistake, they'll break down crying on the mat because we give them a safe space to really express how they're feeling.

But think about all the boys who can't really release the emotional heaviness or the trauma that they've experienced.

And thus, we have poor performance academically or they end up doing something that lands them in the juvenile detention center.

And so they're holding on to a lot of anxiety.

Again, just the pressure of trying, like having adult responsibilities, and I just tell our boys, "Be 12-year-old Eric, or 12-year-old David, 11-year-old John," and they look at me like a light finally clicks on.

And that's what I believe that the boys and our girls are dealing with is just unrelenting pressure in society for them.

- Wow.

Nicole, I wanna talk about this new youth development center that Yunion is involved in and how exciting that is.

- We are.

We are so excited.

It's certainly been a labor of love.

We purchased a building in 2019, did about seven or eight months of renovation, moved in the building in January of 2020, moved out of the building in March of 2020 due to the pandemic.

And our staff worked remotely for almost a year and a half, or a little more than that, in providing services with our school partner sites and in our community collaborative sites.

And so we came back into the building in October of 2022 and started back up our renovations process, our second phase.

We are just so excited to be able to finally open it up full service to the community.

So the building is equipped not only to provide our Cave of Adullam classes to our students, but also provide workforce development training classes.

We have a multipurpose classroom; we have a Health and Wellness room where we provide counseling and case management services to our youth and families; a brain training center in that Health and Wellness room, which is a wonderful technology that Jason serves as the ambassador of neuroptimal that helps the brain to deal with trauma.

We have our performing arts studio for Keys 2 Life program, where we offer dance and beat-making production, songwriting.

We have a computer lab or tutoring and homework assistance.

We really wanted to make it a comprehensive youth development center that is beautiful because our kids deserve that.

And so we're just super excited about having it open to the community.

- Okay, I should also mention you guys have a gala coming up to celebrate 20 years, right?

- Yeah, we are very excited about that.

We're excited about being able to not only honor the work, but one of the key purposes of the gala on October 5th, which is at One Campus Martius, we hope everyone can join us, is to empower the work of The Cave.

And so our waiting list for The Cave almost exceeds 800 boys.

- Wow.

- And this is a growing waiting list that more than likely... We've always had a waiting list, but it has certainly expanded now that there is a documentary on The Cave of Adullam that is streaming now on ESPN+.

It was purchased by ESPN after it won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022.

And so we have to meet that demand.

And so we're utilizing our 20th anniversary to bring light and awareness to that need to expand the work of The Cave.

It is such a monumental service offering that we provide to our young men in the community on a local level.

But even past that, there's a national demand to scale The Cave, and we are working really hard to meet all of those needs.