When 15-year-old Travis Oppenheimer was charged earlier this year with disorderly conduct and trespassing, Willo Wright stood in the courtroom and convinced a judge to sentence him to the Seeds of Independence Rebound program rather than a year of probation.

Each Tuesday for 12 weeks, Oppenheimer attends sessions on topics such as anger management, decision making and goal setting, and works with a mentor outside the group as part of an alternative sentencing program.

Kaitlyn Buckingham, 19, takes her 7-month-old son, Elliott, to a youth parenting group that, like Rebound, is run by Seeds of Independence, a nonprofit organization that supports teens who have been arrested, struggle in school or are young mothers needing a helping hand.

Seeds of Independence is designed “to grab kids that are in dire straits and find different resources for them,” Wright said. “Our programs these days are springboards for the depth and breadth kids need.”

Wright founded the program with her husband, Tom, who serves as executive director. The couple also run Jumpstart, an alternativesentencing program for firsttime, nonviolent juvenile offenders.

Seeds of Independence is slated to move into its new home at Brunswick Landing later this month. The nonprofit will join 24 businesses and organizations including Kestrel Aeroworks and Molnlycke Health Care.

Tom Wright said he hopes to lease space in the 10,000- square-foot building to a social worker, a probation officer and a substance-abuse program to create “a resource center for kids.”

Commercial real estate developer C.J. Dirago, 26, a Topsham graduate of the Jumpstart program, mentors teens like 14-year-old Devon McPhail of Brunswick.

To Dirago, such programs are a godsend. “When you’re 16, you’re not often taking a minute to think about what you’re doing and the implications of what you’re doing,” he said.

As part of the Rebound program, McPhail and other teens worked with Dirago to clean up fields behind a home in Brunswick. The owner paid the group $100 an hour, which they will put toward a sailing trip in June.

The project gave McPhail a chance to reflect. “I know what I’ve done is wrong,” he said, shrugging and peering out under long bangs.

Students in the program show “remarkable changes” after going through Jumpstart and Rebound, said Freeport police Lt. Susan Nourse, a Seeds of Independence board member who works with Jumpstart.

“It takes first-time offenders and just redirects them,” Nourse said. “They don’t need to go to court. They just need an extra set of eyes and ears.”

In past years, a sentencing program run by Judge Joe Field of the West Bath District Court, the “Wednesday afternoon club,” brought parents and probation officers together to discuss teens in the juvenile justice program. But funding was cut more than a year ago.

“A judge could say, as happened not too long ago, ‘You go to rehab or you go to jail.’ Well, the girl lives in Bath and rehabs in South Portland. She has no transportation and her family wasn’t going to give her any transportation,” Tom Wright said.

The Wrights aim to counter that by creating a safe environment at Brunswick Landing.

“Instead of saying, ‘You need to go to South Portland (for rehab),’ we can take them by the shoulders” and help, Tom Wright said.

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