Rotarians braved the heat on Wednesday July 10th for a presentation from the founder of the Center for Children and Youth Justice (CCYJ), Justice Bobbe Bridge, and current President and CEO Rachel Sottile. CCYJ has been in Washington since its inception in 2006 and has aimed to reform the State’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems. “The outcomes were really bad on not just individual cases, but it was systemic. The systems themselves were failing,” Bridge said when describing the impetus for starting CCYJ. CCYJ chose to act through their vision of research based, data driven, silo busting, and youth centered nonprofit to address disparities in overrepresentation in the youth criminal justice system.

CCYJ aims to break the cycles and burdens that come from the justice system when outcomes would set up youth to fall into a vicious cycle. “Sometimes the only graduation that these young people would experience was from childhood homes, to juvenile justice, to homelessness, to poverty, and to the adult criminal system,” Bridge said. CCYJ has sought to end this harmful cycle by convening, coordinating, collaborating, educating, and engaging across Washington with state and local leaders to promote the overall welfare of the youth caught in the flow of this harmful cycle.