Dawn Stueckle
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Dawn has worked with young people in San Francisco for more than two decades, starting campus-based girls’ support groups at Lincoln High School and A.P. Giannini Middle School in the early 1990s and co-founding in 1992 the organization that would later become Sunset Youth Services. In addition to providing leadership for the nonprofit, managing staff, connecting with donors, and building relationships with young people served by Sunset Youth Services, Dawn partners with numerous community coalitions and city agencies as an advisor, change agent, and voice for the disenfranchised youth of the city.
In 2018 Dawn was elected to co-chair the Juvenile Justice Providers Association (JJPA)–– a consortium of community-based organizations that she helped establish in 2004 and which plays an important role in local policy-making, youth advocacy and has a strong voice in how funds are used to meet the needs of vulnerable youth.
What is a Love Parade?
It begins with essential services and it ends with love.
Each week during the height of the pandemic:
• We dropped off 2,200 meals and 80 food boxes to hungry youth and families in need.
• We made daily phone calls, connected via Zoom, encouraged frustrated parents,
and provided support groups and mindfulness practices to stressed out teens.
• We worked with our youth employees to create online challenges that harnessed the creativity of our community artists, songwriters, and musicians.
• We helped kids on probation keep their eyes on the prize, while also working directly with our local youth detention centers, DAs, and public defenders to get kids with low-level offenses released from jail and put onto our caseloads.
And as often as we're able, we throw in a little gratuitous joy.
Imagine getting an early morning text saying, "Hey, the Love Parade is coming to visit. Will you be around in a half hour?" and then looking out your window to see a convoy of 11 cars led by our new mobile recording studio sprinter van. Now picture lots of hand-colored posters taped on the cars and bobbing in the windows as staff, staff children, and pets drive by. Throw in some honking, waving, kiss-throwing, and shout outs––"We love you! You are not alone! We're in this together!"––and you've been visited by the LOVE Parade.
When pandemic strikes, we bring relationships on the road––
because love matters.
