Elfenworks Foundation
In Harmony With Homeboy Industries

Greg Boyle to receive Harmony with Hope Award, October 15, 2009

The gritty streets of Los Angeles's projects make up his home, and his flock—recovering gang members—are more like wolves than sheep, but that doesn't stop Father Gregory Boyle from carefully tending his pastoral duty. In return, Father Greg derives great joy along with some heartache, and both help shape his life and fill it with meaning.

Father Greg's true ministry began when he was assigned to the Mission Dolores parish in 1986, located in the heart of four different projects that are home turf to eight rival gangs. Just as he knew at an early age that he was called to serve God, he knew his specific path was to minister to the lost and poor. He'd spent a few years teaching at LA's Loyola High School but his work at Dolores Mission, supported by time spent with the poor in Bolivia and with convicts in Mexico and at Folsom Prison, introduced him to his "homies"—kids and adults who had never known the possibility of hope, and the change that hope can create.

Today, Father Greg runs Homeboy Industries, a 250-person nonprofit organization, with a nearly $10 million annual budget. Homeboy's stated mission is to help at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education. To that end, Homeboy Industries is a one-stop shop for those who have decided to leave the world of gangs behind.  They provide addiction and recovery programs, a full range of educational services (including a charter high school), anger management training, etiquette and courtesy classes, day care programs (and parenting classes), job counseling and placement, and tattoo removal services. 

Each year 12,000-15,000 people avail themselves Homeboy Industries' services. Three quarters of them are active gang members in LA's 600 gangs. For most, the first stop is a visit with Father Greg. Eighty-five percent of those seeking service are on parole.  They've heard Father Greg speak: he regularly visits 25 of LA's jails. He offers encouragement and an alternative, and when he leaves, he hands out his business card and asks the inmates to come visit him when they get out.  And so they do.

Those more ready to fully leave the world of gangs behind—a world often populated by their parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles—often find themselves working for one of Homeboy Industries' own businesses: They operate a bakery, a café, and silkscreen, maintenance and retail shops. Together, the Homeboy industries fund about a third of Homeboy Industries' operations. Two hundred former gang members help the 45 senior staff members manage and run the entire operation. The majority or the rest are placed in jobs with any one of the 100 or so organizations that have agreed to hire from Homeboy Industries.

Those less ready may have a tattoo removed and attend a few counseling sessions before veering back into the life they know best; a little later, they may find their way back to Homeboy Industries, ready to commit to greater change. For many, it is a long, circuitous path out of the gangs. And for some, they never make it. Father Greg keeps track of those he's lost forever, the ones who have died violently. The count stands at 164. And, for the rest,, Fr. Greg (or G-Dawg as he's affectionately called), is there for them: stalwart, solid and welcoming in a world without foundation.

In 2008, 20 years after Homeboy Industries was born (then known as Jobs for a Future), Father Greg helped dedicate a 21,000 square foot building located in LA's Chinatown—importantly neutral gang territory. They day they moved in, they'd outgrown the space. Homeboy Industries is the nation's largest gang-intervention program, and it is the only model that provides the full range of services that help those formerly involved in gangs find within themselves new identities, a crucial step in creating sustainable change.

"Father Greg is total dedication, total love, and absolutely selfless," claims Mona Hobson, Homeboy's director of development. He's also total focus—never forgetting the motto that is an integral part of their logo: Nothing stops a bullet like a job. And while he knows he can't save them all, he started with saving one, and that was good. Twenty years later, more than 100,000 people have been helped by Father Greg.