AIM was founded by Leila Steinberg in 1998. This year AIM moved from a volunteer effort into an organization with paid staff members, expanding Steinberg's Heart Education programs and their reach in the community. AIM puts these programs into environments where they are most needed. Inner-city youth must have alternative ways to experience and envision their lives.

Steinberg's writing and performance workshops give at-risk youth an outlet for their pain, frustration and rage. Her curriculum engages the heart to reach young people in a way they can relate to. She has run successful programs in juvenile halls and group homes, and the demand for her work is increasing.

AIM programs confront juvenile crime and victimization, drug abuse and gang violence and other pressing issues facing at-risk youth in a workshop format that combines creative arts with an open dialogue. We encourage participants to take responsibility for their actions and get in touch with their emotions. Steinberg helps them connect with their hearts and turn anger and pain into creativity.

AIM promotes artistic expression as a way to handle problems as opposed to choosing violence, drugs or other forms of escape. As the program facilitator, Steinberg sees confronting pain as the best way to move past it. She believes self-awareness is a key to making better choices.

The only way to stop overcrowded juvenile halls and jails, and to correct the misperception that the solution is to build more prisons, is by providing successful countermeasures to the problems that lead to incarceration. Steinberg's Heart Education is one successful answer to this very complex and mounting issue. Her two decades in rap music have provided an extraordinary foundation for facilitating communication with at-risk and high risk youth.