Our Vision
Is that our most marginalized and underserved youth will gain the life skills and character needed to avoid the criminal justice system and transform from delinquent youth into positive community leaders.

Our Mission
Reduce juvenile crime and incarceration through legal education, mentoring, and leadership training.
 

About the Founder
FLY’s Founder and Executive Director is Christa Gannon. Christa graduated with honors from University of California at Santa Barbara with a B.S. in Sociology and Law and Society. Christa then graduated with honors from Stanford Law School and is now a member of the California Bar. At Stanford she created a volunteer program where law students taught incarcerated youth. The Program received an award for violence prevention presented by the California State Department of Education, and is still serving youth today. After completing a year long clerkship for Federal Judge Napoleon A. Jones, Jr., at the Southern District Court of California, Christa was selected as one of ten people in the United States to receive funding from the George Soros Foundation to develop an innovative criminal justice program. With this seed funding Christa Started FLY.  In recognition of Christa’s outstanding abilities, in the fall of 2000, she was selected by the National Law-Related Education Consortium (funded by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) to be California’s State Coordinator of Law-Related Education. In this capacity she supports individuals and organizations that want to start law-related education projects. In October of 2001, Christa received the first City of San Jose, Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Award for her work in creating FLY. In December of 2002 she also received the Gentry Magazine Community Stars Award for her success in building FLY In the spring of 2003, she was recognized by Santa Clara Law School as the Bay Area Woman of Distinction for her work in mentoring and nurturing public interest law students.

In the fall of 2003, Christa received the Youth Advocate of the year award from Legal Advocates for Children and Youth.  In the spring of 2004, Christa received the Mountain View/Los Altos Challenge Team's Champion for Youth Award.

In addition to her work at FLY, Christa is also a wife and a mother to a three year old daughter, Hailey Morgan.