WASHINGTON — Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles, recently welcomed Father Greg Boyle and other representatives of Homeboy Industries in Boyle Heights during a trip to urge lawmakers to support efforts to help at-risk youth and former gang members to lead crime-free and productive lives.

Boyle is the founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, which assists at-risk and former gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education.

Under Boyle’s leadership, Homeboy Industries has grown into a nationally recognized program that has served members of more than half of the 1,100 known gangs in Los Angeles County.

Homeboy Industries traces its roots to Jobs For a Future, a program created in 1988 by Boyle at Dolores Mission parish.

In an effort to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth, he and members of the community developed positive alternatives, including establishing an elementary school, a day care program and finding legitimate employment opportunities for young people.

In 1992, as a response to the riots in Los Angeles, Boyle launched Homeboy Bakery with a mission to create an environment that provided training, work experience and the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side.

The business was created under the organizational banner of Jobs For a Future and Proyecto Pastoral, and separated from Dolores Mission Church, a Roybal -Allard representative said.

The success of the bakery created the groundwork for additional businesses, thus prompting Jobs For a Future to become an independent nonprofit organization, Homeboy Industries, in 2001, the representative noted.

Today Homeboy Industries’ nonprofit economic development enterprises include Homeboy Bakery, Homeboy Silkscreen, Homeboy Maintenance, Homeboy/HomegirlMerchandise, and HomegirlCafé,

Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles, is recognized as the largest gang intervention program in the county, and has become a national model, the representative said.