 
As society becomes increasingly technologically based, jobs once available to those who neither finished high school nor furthered their education in an institution of higher learning have become scarce. What are the mechanisms of survival for those who lack the necessary analytical skills to gain employment? Students who reside in poor, marginalized communities are confronted with this question at an early age. Within the context of the Algebra Project, YPP seeks to help these students answer this question.
The legacy of the Young People's Project, Inc. began during the Civil Rights Movement, the political struggle for Afro-Americans to be included into society. This legacy has been handed to us by Robert Moses, one time director of the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and founder of the Algebra Project, a non-profit organization designed to increase the numbers of poor children and children of color in the public school system who are mathematically literate. At the forefront of the Movement were young people, high school and college students, who organized voter registration drives, marches and sit-ins to make a demand to local towns, to the state and to the whole nation, that they be included in society.
Young people who take on leadership roles in the development of the programs which support YPP have been coined "Math Literacy Workers". A company such as YPP, which is owned and operated by Math Literacy Workers, opens up a new frontier for economic and professional development in communities whose major economic activities center around restaurants, barber shops and mom and pop stores.
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The Young People's Project, Inc. (YPP) began in Jackson, Mississippi in 1996, and was founded by Omo and Taba Moses, Java Jackson, April Davis, Sammie Myers, Antonio Allen, Nathaniel Young, Shameka Shelton, Demetrica Gorden, and Durrell Moore; two Algebra Project graduates and nine eighth grade Algebra Project Students. In the course of three years, the Young People's Project has expanded to include sites in Cambridge, MA and Atlanta, GA. YPP was founded on the belief that literacy, specifically mathematical literacy, is the organizational tool, comparable to the right to vote, for disenfranchised Blacks to determine their existence in today's society.
The Young People's Project prepares and develops high school and college age students from the target population of the Algebra Project to market skills to the Algebra Project network; a network composed of students, parents, educators and activists who prepare middle school students to complete Algebra by the eighth grade and thus enter the college prep math sequence in high school. YPP is a powerful model of young students of color working together to positively impact math education in the public school system.
Staff members direct programs, homework help centers, Algebra Project training sessions and summer institutes which service Algebra Project students. They develop curricular units which are then used during math workshops that they run. During these workshops they publicly demonstrate and share their math skills with their peers, teachers and parents. YPP students also facilitate national meetings and conferences for AP students. In addition, YPP staff manage a desktop publishing center which produces AP curriculum materials for the Algebra Project Network.
YPP students are doing something that no one else can. By publicly doing math themselves, and inviting others to do math with them, they are creating an environment where it's "normal" to learn mathematics and to have fun while doing it. More importantly, they are beginning to break down perceptions and stereotypes that the broader society has about their generation's inability and lack of desire to do well in mathematics and even in school. The example, provided by YPP students, of young people taking ownership over their own education, stands in direct contrast to these myths.