BLOC Ministries

Dr. Dwight and Stephanie Young began BLOC Ministries in 1998 after working as youth pastors for more than a decade in Cincinnati and in Knoxville, Tennessee. As community pastors, they’d seen youth and adults whose lives and neighborhoods were breaking or shattered. The Youngs realized that many students slipped between the cracks: not involved in school, church, social clubs, or any productive pursuits. Yet these were the ones who were usually at the highest risk for dropping out, drugs, teen pregnancy, crime, sex trafficking and other risks of urban streets. BLOC was created to build connections and safe spaces for students, families and adults to thrive and succeed in spite of difficult circumstances. We’re a faith-based non-profit that focuses on healthy, personal relationships and activities that help to build hope, purpose, and vital life skills. We started with one after-school site in the village of Cleves, Ohio. Along the many hours of playing basketball or board games, eating pizza, or quizzing on spelling words - connections were formed. Students shared their deepest fears, highest hopes, and hardest life struggles that they and their families faced. We decided to join them in a journey toward healing, hope, and love. We are BLOC.

We shape, form and transcend lives, one at a time as a mentor and as a neighbor, sharing life together to encourage and nurture positive life choices and goals. We are one family, all children of God. We provide growth opportunities, creating a positive ripple effect in the community making changes that impact their families for a lifetime. Over time, this can flow from one-to-one: changing families, rebuilding blocks, saving lives and transforming communities. We change lives through short- and long-term intervention and prevention programs and services to meet neighbors' needs where they are in their life walk. We provide the necessary mental health & counseling services, guidance, mentoring, arts exposure, after-school and in-school support, trauma intervention and much more through nearly 20 BLOC Ministries programs, industries and services. We provide, track and deploy job skills, training, development & placement via our 4 key social enterprise businesses known as BLOC Industries which incorporate one-to-one training programs and ensure job or career placement with many of our strategic business and corporate partners.