Featured Speakers and Awardees
Thomas Beauford
President & CEO
The Buffalo Urban League
Taylor Epps
Mistress of Ceremonies
Eyewitness News Channel 7
John V. Elmore, Esq.
William L. Evans and
Whitney M. Young
Humanitarian Award
Dorothy E. Hill
Family Life
Zandra A. Cunningham
Emerging Leader Award
Taniya Crosby
National Fuel Scholarship
Aniya Hugley
Outstanding Youth Award
Luis Rodriguez, Jr.
Outstanding Youth Award
Julie Barrett-O'Neill
Community Service
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
Franchelle Parker
Community Service
Open Buffalo
Support Buffalo Urban League Programs & Youth Scholarships
Our Youth are the Promise of the Future
Through our Scholarship Program the Buffalo Urban League invests financial resources to help support youth education. Scholarship awards are provided in consideration of academic achievement, character, community service, and financial need.
Our Programs
Since 1927, our staff and volunteers have worked diligently to promote achievement for all by empowering individuals, supporting families, and strengthening community. Thanks to you, we directly serve more than 25,000 people – individuals whose hopes and dreams, successes, and challenges affect us all.
We are proud to share information about our programs and the impact the Buffalo Urban League makes daily in the lives of people. It is the people that make our community stronger. We hope you will consider supporting our continued work on behalf of our community. Over the course of the year, our staff and volunteers work diligently to promote achievement for all by encouraging individuals, supporting families and strengthening community.
In keeping with our commitment to support, strengthen, and build families, the Buffalo Urban League focuses our programs on supporting individuals from birth through senior years. We recognize family as the critical foundation of all our work. Through our Preventive, Foster Care, Adoption, High Fidelity Wraparound Vendor Services, Seniors’ Multi-Service Center, and our Community Health Workers (CHW), we cover a wide array of services including child abuse prevention, foster care and foster care prevention, adoption, family reunification, parent education, family counseling, health, and wellness.
In the YOLO program, the youth will learn basic job readiness skills with a focus on their HSE. This exciting program provides services includes classroom training, on-the job training, job shadowing and work experience with the opportunity to earn monetary stipends. The YOLO program focuses on preparing youth for career pathways in areas consist with the needs of the labor market, such as Advanced Manufacturing, Health Care and Hospitality and Tourism. Based on need, youth can participate in programming for up to 30 hours per week for 26 weeks.
To be eligible, you must be a youth, between the age of 16 – 24 who is out of school and in need of their High School Equivalency (HSE).
As the oldest HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) approved Housing Counseling Agency in Western New York, the Buffalo Urban League’s Housing and Community Development (H&CD) Department delivers solutions by providing our neighbors with homeownership education, first-time homebuyer assistance, financial empowerment (budget and credit) coaching, foreclosure prevention counseling, predatory lending avoidance, affordable rental search coaching, fair housing education, and minority and women business loan and technical assistance.
Our team of highly trained housing professionals have more than 100 years of combined real estate, banking, mortgage, and small business development experience. We strive to ensure that all of our programs are available to everyone in need in Erie County focusing on the City of Buffalo. You can routinely find our team in our neighborhoods, meeting with people one on one and conducting workshops, with the overall goal to educate and increase our neighbors’ knowledge base.
Through our workforce development programs, we provide education, job training, and employment services that ensure individuals are prepared to secure employment opportunities leading to economic self-reliance. High educational achievement is a critical pathway to achieving economic self-reliance.
Our year-round programs for high school students and out-of-school programs for youth who have not received a high school diploma or a high school equivalency diploma (HSE, formerly GED) provide academic support, tutoring, cultural awareness, restorative justice, career exploration, mentoring, money management, college and business tours, work experience, and case management. Upon graduation, we transition graduates into college, job training programs, jobs, apprenticeships and/or the military. In addition, we award college scholarships to high school and high school equivalency (HSE) graduates from the Buffalo-Niagara Region.
The program’s purpose is to further prepare individuals for the workforce by providing job training, job placement, follow-up and supportive services in areas that respond to the needs of businesses.
What We Are About
Empowering communities. Changing lives. The Buffalo Urban League is a leading and trusted advocate for, and provider of, services that empower the disadvantaged populations of Buffalo-Niagara.
The Buffalo Urban League’s Mission is to empower African Americans, other minorities, and disadvantaged individuals to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights.
Five Point Empowerment Strategy
Building strong and stable families provides the foundation upon which these five strategies are based: