H5D at Chester Youth Empowerment Summit

On Saturday, May 8th, 2010 the Youth Action Scholars presented a workshop at the Chester Youth Collaborative Youth Council’s “Flip the Script, Stop the Violence” 2010 Chester Youth Empowerment Summit at Widener University. Workshop areas addressed: healthy relationships, life skills, violence prevention, bullying, peer pressure, conflict resolution, substance abuse, self-esteem, hip hop culture and more. Their workshop entitled “Self-Destruction” informed and empowered personal decision making for health and well-being. There was an awesome turnout, and the Youth Council did a great job! We look forward to working with them again in the future.

Building the Community Classroom - the Final Youth Action Scholar event of the Year

The first year of the Youth Action Scholars concluded with a very successful final Teen Cafe on May 14th at Penrose Playground. The theme of the workshop was "Building the Community Classroom: Learning to Learn Outside of School.” All three YAS groups (Health 5 Dimensions, Race Culture and Mass Media, and Political Youth Team) did activities that exemplified their groups main messages and goals:

Race Culture and Mass Media did an activity that had the audience dialog about how much TV they watch and how it influences their perceptions. They then linked how society views black men and women in society.

The Political Youth Team did an activity in which the audience wore a blindfold that represented “how blind we are to the politics around us.” PYT then asked questions about everyday items such as water bottles, corner store snacks, and Walmart bags and challenged the participants to expand their minds and "go beyond the veil" to see how politics effects them.

Health 5 Dimensions group’s activity had the crowd rate their priorities of the 5 dimensions of health (spiritual, mental, physical, emotional, and social) and how they can better balance these dimensions.

After a rotation of these 3 activities the audience had to do an activity to see how Race, Health, and Politics all connect in our daily lives.

Thank you to YOUTHadelphia, PCVPC, parents, family, UCCP reps, and community members for coming out to this event. As one audience member reflected, "youth can teach adults a lot about how to run this city!" and this year, the UCCP’s Youth Action Scholars did indeed build a community classroom at the Penrose Playground!