Our Story
Why ALMS Came to Be
Invisible - that is how she felt. She grew up in a home with neglect, abuse, violence, and mental health issues, which only complicated her learning disability and kept her from learning how to read, do math, and speak with confidence.
Traumatized, she drifted through school and eventually graduated illiterate. How would she find a living-wage job, and how would she escape from the madness of her family? Would she sell drugs, allow allow herself to be trafficked, or turn to gangs for protection and pocket money? These are the choices facing many young people without hope today.
They drift through life with the sense that no one sees them, that they have no one to turn to, and no one who cares about them. Families are broken, torn apart by addiction, rage, and the hopelessness of poverty and facing mental health issues that steal their sense of purpose and direction.
All Leaders Must Serve (ALMS) provides a solution. We are a non-profit mentoring organization that offers job readiness training to empower young adults ages 15-25 to become self-sufficient, prepared for a living-wage job, and ready to give back to their community.
ALMS seeks out the "invisible" young adults in our community who turn to low-wage jobs or remain unemployed. They are often our foster youth aging out of care, and homeless youth couch surfing or living on the street. Youth between the ages of 18-25 face a 22% poverty rate, leading to depression, anxiety, and emotional trauma.
That is why ALMS offers adult mentors and job readiness training centered around work ethic, character development, and public speaking. Our training program has been available at Cache Creek High School during the day, and evening sessions have been moved from Woodland Adult Education to the new ALMS Clubhouse and Training Center, which allows for additional workshops in adult living and self-sufficient training on the evenings and weekends. Since 2015, ALMS has served over 166 young adults, and those ages 18 and above have made it into entry-level jobs, college, trade school, or a combination of the three.