SRTM through its various programs supports organize youth around issues that impact them directly and their community. Through SRTM youth organizing, students work in teams to plan activities and organize for change.
Shaneka Boucher is an entrepreneur, nonprofit executive, author, former elected official, educator, and community development leader whose career has been defined by a consistent ability to identify gaps, build solutions, and turn ideas into sustainable programs and institutions.
Brooklyn-born and Camden-rooted, Boucher is the Founder and President of Social Responsibility Through Me (SRTM), an organization she established in 2010 with a commitment to expanding opportunity for young people and families. What began with a focus on scholarships and youth development has grown into a multifaceted organization providing school-based programming, workforce development, mentoring, leadership development, and other supports to hundreds of young people.
Boucher's leadership extends beyond the nonprofit sector. Her career has spanned education, government, entrepreneurship, public policy, environmental justice, workforce development, and community organizing. She previously served on the Camden City Council, bringing her experience as an educator, nonprofit leader, mother, and community advocate into public office.
Throughout her public service, Boucher became particularly involved in environmental justice and community-centered policy. Her work has included advocating for stronger protections for overburdened communities, advancing community participation in environmental decision-making, supporting air-quality monitoring, and collaborating with residents, researchers, institutions, and government leaders. She has continued that commitment through leadership and board service with environmental and civic organizations.
At the center of Boucher's work is a belief that communities especially young people should not simply be recipients of programs or policies but active participants in shaping their own futures. That philosophy is reflected in SRTM's approach to engaging, employing, and empowering youth and in Boucher's broader record of connecting community voice with education, economic opportunity, policy, and institutional resources.
She is also the author of Grants Aren't Free, which draws upon her experience building and funding organizations and challenges leaders to think beyond simply winning grants toward creating the infrastructure, accountability, strategy, and sustainability necessary to make funding matter.
Across more than a decade of leadership, a clear pattern has emerged in Boucher's work: when she sees a gap, she builds. A lack of opportunity becomes a program. A workforce challenge becomes a pathway to employment. A community concern becomes advocacy and policy. An idea becomes an organization capable of serving at scale.
Today, Shaneka Boucher represents a generation of leaders who operate across traditional boundaries combining the instincts of an entrepreneur, the discipline of an executive, the perspective of a former policymaker, and the commitment of a community advocate.
Her work continues to center on a larger purpose: building systems that create opportunity, developing the next generation of leaders, and demonstrating what becomes possible when communities are given the resources and power to shape their own future.
