NYA Class of 2025 is on track for on-time high school graduation and college placement; Brenda Diego (at right) will complete college in 2026. (NYA photos)
The hospitality of St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in L.A.’s Mar Vista community will help Neighborhood Youth Association (NYA) – a diocesan institution since 1906 – strengthen its mission of 100% college placement for under-resourced students in 2025 and beyond.
Effective Jan. 8, at the invitation of the parish, NYA will relocate its afterschool mentoring and tutoring of high schoolers and middle-school students to the St. Bede’s campus at 3950 Grand View Blvd., home to the church since 1967.
Located at corner of Grand View Boulevard and Charnock, St. Bede’s Episcopal Church serves L.A.‘s Mar Vista community. Campus is new home to college-placement program of Neighborhood Youth Association. (Photos: Bob Williams)
Providing savings of more than $100,000 annually, the move brings NYA back to Mar Vista where the agency was headquartered for some 40 years before consolidating operations in nearby Venice on a site leased, at increasing cost, from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
“This gracious welcome from St. Bede’s – whose rector and members are longtime supporters of NYA – is a fiscal game-changer, making the agency more nimble in serving its students and their families,” said Bishop John Harvey Taylor, chair of NYA’s board of trustees. “Every year, thanks to NYA and its supporters, a brilliant cohort of first-generation children of immigrant workers heads off to four-year colleges. The board and I are fully committed to doing all we can to continue to support these families and this program, which our community and country need more than ever before.”
The Rev. Jennifer Wagner Pavia, rector of St. Bede’s Church, celebrates Dec. 15, “Rose Sunday” Advent Eucharist in parish sanctuary graced by striking stained glass.
“We at St. Bede’s are thrilled to have NYA back in Mar Vista,” said the Rev. Jennifer Wagner Pavia, rector of St. Bede’s and a member of NYA’s board of trustees. “This new partnership is a natural fit that will offer greater opportunity to engage the students, their families, and the dedicated staff. Their presence here on campus is a gift to the congregation and the neighborhood, as we see the work of NYA strategically consistent with our parish’s commitment to supportive community ministry.”
Jerry Hornof, senior warden of St. Bede’s and an NYA donor, agrees. “We have always valued our relationship with NYA,” he told The News. “As we enter this new partnership, we are excited about the opportunities this will provide to both St. Bede’s and NYA to enhance our connections. I know our late parishioner Ruth Nicastro, a longtime supporter of NYA, is smiling.”
“The warm hospitality of St. Bede’s is so deeply appreciated,” said Bob Williams, president/CEO of NYA’s board and diocesan canon for common life. “Rooted in decades of friendship shared by St. Bede’s and NYA, the move is at several levels a homecoming as well as an invitation to new outreach reflecting Mar Vista’s considerable ethnic and cultural diversity.”
The Venerable Bede in action, as depicted on tile displayed at St. Bede’s Church, Mar Vista.
Support from St. Bede’s “dovetails with that which NYA receives annually from other Westside parishes, especially St. Matthew’s Church and School in Pacific Palisades and St. Augustine by-the-Sea in Santa Monica,” Williams said. “This generous collaboration exemplifies NYA’s longtime motto, ‘Together We Succeed.’”
“Plus, a parish named for Bede – the venerable 8th-century scholar known as the father of English history – is a fitting venue for student achievement,” Williams added.
The move gives NYA an opportunity to recalibrate its programs going forward, part of a visioning process recently initiated by the board of trustees, Williams said. Recent decisions include discontinuing NYA’s work with elementary school students who have various other local afterschool programs increasingly available to them.
Further evaluation and planning will continue this spring while NYA guides some 40 college-bound students – including 12 Class of 2025 seniors who have applied to multiple colleges and universities.
After on-time graduation from high school, NYA students pursue a variety of majors, from neuroscience at UCLA and mechanical engineering at Cal-State Long Beach, to law at Cal Berkeley and nursing at Mount St. Mary’s, to name a few. Community college is a starting point for other students, including a 2023 NYA grad who plans to open his own barbering business.
While some students qualify for full-ride funding at four-year universities, all receive scholarships raised by NYA donors. An invested $500,000 bequest by a St. Bede’s parishioner funds several scholarships annually, and additional funds are raised by NYA’s annual scholarship benefit, set this year for May 10 at St. Matthew’s, Pacific Palisades.
Longtime community funders include the Westside’s Las Doradas women’s organization and Investors in Education, a cadre of financial professionals united in annual support of NYA.
Pictured in 1907 photo are youngsters served at L.A.’s downtown Neighborhood House, to which Neighborhood Youth Association traces its early days. (Photo: Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles)
A fully non-sectarian agency, NYA’s work of serving youth and families dates from the 1880s in downtown Los Angeles following the settlement-house model of social service. Since NYA’s formal establishment in 1906, each successive Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles has chaired its board of trustees. In 1947 NYA moved its work to the Westside to serve local at-risk teens.
Donors wishing to help support the work of NYA may contribute online at www.nyayouth.org or mail checks payable to “Neighborhood Youth Association” in care of St. Bede’s Church, 3950 Grand View Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066. Inquiries may be emailed to rwilliams@nyayouth.org.