WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Georgetown University‘s McCourt School of Public Policy in Washington now has a relationship with a $100 million fundraising campaign to expand an acclaimed Los Angeles gang-intervention program founded by Jesuit Father Greg Boyle.
Frank McCourt Jr., the billionaire Georgetown alumnus who founded the school in 2013, is leading the Homeboy Industries fundraising, announced in October, with an initial $10 million.
The capital drive was promoted June 11 at the McCourt School with what was billed as the Global Homeboy Network D.C. Summit.
Homeboy Industries was inspired in part by the Ignatian meditation about finding God “in the lowly place,” Father Boyle said. That “is where the joy is.”
“You stand in awe of what the poor have to carry, rather than judgment,” he said.
Building ‘Hope Village’ out of Homeboy Industries
The fundraising campaign supports the development of the Father Gregory Boyle Center for Radical Kinship — a major expansion of the Homeboy Industries campus, which will become the centerpiece of Hope Village, billed as “a visionary initiative reimagining reentry in Los Angeles.”
Hope Village will also redevelop the neighborhood surrounding Men’s Central Jail and The California Endowment’s Center for Healthy Communities. The plans are for more than 200 units of “supportive and transitional housing” and 35,000 square feet of space dedicated to mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, job training and career development.
McCourt said the expansion will “solve real problems, not just kick the can down the road.”
Boyle founded Homeboy Industries in 1988. Now with a nearly $50 million annual budget, 8,000 clients in the Los Angeles area, and hundreds of affiliates and partners around the world, it includes 10 businesses ranging from a bakery, pet grooming, an art academy and a shop for “recycled” apparel.
Its 18-month program includes job training, substance abuse treatment, tattoo removal, and education for former gang members, many of whom are recently out of prison.
3 goals of Homeboy Industries
The three principal goals are gang intervention, rehabilitation and reentry into the workforce, and, as Father Boyle said at the summit, to “provide hope for those for whom hope is foreign.”
“What I saw in Homeboy is what I learned from the Jesuits in practice,” McCourt said. He called it “a combination of the vision with the real success.”
But Boyle said he prefers to “never use the word success.” He is fond of quoting St. Teresa of Kolkata: “We are called to be faithful, not successful.”
“We live in a strange world,” said McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers who started the school named for him with two $100 million donations. “We don’t talk about goodness, beauty and truth enough. There seems to be a coarseness now. It’s too easy to exclude, too easy to push away, when we should be doing the opposite.”
Following the violence that accompanied last year’s raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles, “we’re at the very low point,” McCourt said. “But things are going to change. We need to find a way for our national politics to change.”
Witnessing love of neighbor in action
Father Boyle said he was in Minneapolis in December when President Donald Trump at a White House Cabinet meeting referred to Somalian immigrants there as garbage, but the priest added that he observed hopeful responses after that remark.
“People left their homes, and they’re suddenly feeding people and transporting children (to and from school),” the priest remarked, saying he was heartened to see signs there proclaiming, “We love our neighbors.”
“Everything worth happening will grow from below,” he added.
At the time of the Trump remarks, Minneapolis was the focal point of a major immigration enforcement surge, and much of the news coverage said many immigrant families — particularly within the Somali community — were afraid to leave their homes. At the same time, a fraud investigation was launched into taxpayer-funded programs, with several U.S. citizens of Somali descent arrested and charged with fraud.
An October announcement said the McCourt School “will work with Homeboy to guide research and help elevate their work to a national level.”
“Belonging is not just an ideal,” said Carole Roan Gresenz, dean of the McCourt School. “It is a public safety strategy.”
Developing ‘radical kinship’
“Radical kinship” refers to what Homeboy staff members call “a familial bond between staff and clients.”
Steve Avalos, vice president of operations at Homeboy Industries and a former gang member, said that means “we celebrate accomplishments: getting jobs, getting off probation, getting their children (out of foster care).”
“There are no conditions. You just have to walk through the door and want it,” he said.
“This approach to the work is very radical. It’s not normal,” said Jose Arellano, another vice president of operations. It involves “a lot of hugs.” When he first entered the program, “people went above and beyond to connect with me. They just continued to shower me with love.”
Father Boyle was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2024.
Kurt Jensen writes for OSV News from Washington.
