Columbus youth group navigating federal funding cuts

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Wesley Moore and his brothers grew up homeless, struggling just to survive. Now, the non-profit organization they built from the ground up is hanging by a thread. 

"The goal is to keep them alive more than anything, keep them off the street,” Wesley Moore, director and co-founder of Our Brothers Keepers, said. "A lot of what we've been doing it out of our own pockets. For the last three years - three years - was getting $300,000. So now I'm a zero." 

That $300,000 in federal funding paid the youth for summer jobs and built apartments for teens kicked out of foster care on their 18th birthday. 

"People always say, ‘I know how you feel,’” said Jaylen Bro, an Our Brothers Keepers resident for the last ten months. “No, you don't. They understand what feelings can be brought up from the situation that we were put in, or had to have had to have a fight and gone through.” 

Bro is learning real skills remodeling a space for the organization. The leaders said the program works because of who they are. 

“A couple words can stop a kids’ doing something really crazy and just having, like, a safe space and a mentor,” Our Brothers Keepers co-founder Markey Moore said. 

"We're seeing so many young people not have an outlet and a positive outlet that actually looks like them,” mental health specialist Lance Sullivan said. “They can understand where they're coming from." 

When Kentrell Rinehart leaves the program, he'll head to college to play football at Central State. 

"I got good mentors, good, great men I got to be able to talk to, you know what I mean, about personal problems and all that,” he said. 

A sudden lack of federal funding dampens the outlook for the group, so City of Grace Church stepped in to provide resources, manpower, and funding. 

"With their backs against the wall, they can turn to other things like violence and, and crime, so it's important that we have these things in place so they can have somewhere to turn to,” City of Grace Church Executive Pastor Rick Jones said. 

Our Brothers Keepers believe the partnership can be a model for other organizations in the city, and the proof it works is in the young men whose lives are changed. 

"There's always somebody in a worse situation than you,” Bro said. "You can get up and go, go find a job, you can get up and go do something that can be productive and make your life better." 

Another young man living at the apartments for the last two years has raised his GPA from the 2s to a 4.0. He is going to college in the fall and joining the United States Marines Reserves. After that, he wants to come back to Our Brothers Keepers to help youth like himself.