Resa O’Reilly Shearn founded Project Promise, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of at-risk youth in the St. Croix community. After over a decade of working with the area’s youth in various capacities, she recognized a few simple truths. 

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Resa recognized a strong need for a holistic program that would simultaneously address many of the challenges that the island’s at-risk youth face. She realized that a large number of the Islands’ youth experience a combination of risk factors that put their futures in jeopardy. In order to have the greatest impact, she saw that what at-risk youth really needed was a support program that would empower the whole child to succeed.  

 

In her work, Resa saw firsthand that it often takes just one person to express a real interest to make a positive impact in a child’s life. Motivated by her desire to make a difference in the lives of these at-risk youth and her community, Project Promise was born. Working together with a Board of Directors she got to work creating an organization in St. Croix that will combine one-on-one mentoring with an educational, cultural and vocational focus to safeguard a brighter future for at-risk youth in our community.