Deirdre Love, founder, and Chief Executive Officer for Teens With a Purpose (TWP) is a visionary, curator, curriculum developer, and youth and community advocate. Born and raised in Harlem she relocated to Norfolk, Va in the late 80’ where she raised her three sons. Love’s organization pedagogy teaches that people are their own experts. No one is empty; everyone has value and knowledge to share. Hence under her leadership, the organization is a trailblazer and a celebrated organization both locally and nationally in youth literary arts with their legacy program Hampton Roads Youth Poets that has competed internationally and place third worldwide in 2016. With the development of the Youth Poet Laureate Program for Hampton Roads formed in 2015, the Hampton Roads Youth Poetry Team formed in 2008, and the State-wide, Virginia Youth Poet Laureate Program beginning launch in 2023 in partnership with National Youth Poet Laureate Program.
Their Peacemaking/Space Making Project called Purpose Park which began in 2016 has become an oasis in the blighted neighborhood that Teens With a Purpose proudly calls home. From a gravel lot, Purpose Park now houses fruit trees, flower-lined walking paths, a vegetable & herb garden & a goldfish pond. It is a meeting space for community gatherings and an example of the results of what empowered people can accomplish together. Purpose Place hosts thousands throughout the year with educational, civic, and cultural art performances. TWP continues its tradition as a prolific provider of quality activities and programs for youth and their families and community, providing structured programs that include special events (20-30 per year) delivered throughout the community for the past six years. TWP has been awarded “Project Of The Year” by the Norfolk Tree Commission for outstanding work at Purpose Park and featured on WHRO for its work creating a rain garden. The teenagers helped design and install the 1,200 square-foot garden, which is estimated to help absorb about 33,000 gallons per month of rainwater that would otherwise clog storm drains

Love has just over three decades of training and development in the field of Creative Youth Development. Creative Youth Development, a commitment to supporting young people’s stories, ideas, and dreams through creative expression and honoring their lived experiences, is what she lives to do! She and her team of youth peer leaders and teaching artists & mentors hold space for young people to critically analyze life and control their own narrative, tell their stories, and write and rewrite themselves into their true, best selves - creatively.
In 2022 Love Co-Chaired the Mayor's Advisory Council for St. Paul’s Quadrants, Workgroup for Community Based Public Safety & Youth Engagement. She and her team are now Certified Public Safety Professionals and have launched a pilot Safe Passage program to develop relationships with the youth and their parents, as well as intervene and mediate potential conflict to ensure that students from Ruffner Academy & Booker T. Washington High School arrive to and from school in a safe and timely manner.