Leadership Development Institute 2011

Every summer we provide the opportunity for a select group of past participants and Temple University students to participate in our Leadership Development Institute (LDI) to gain a working knowledge of our organization, the process of youth leadership development and project facilitation. Successful graduates of the LDI are eligible to become part of UCCP’s Leaders Corps, a dedicated group of talented young adults who facilitate all of our programs.

LDI participants are trained on hard skills of facilitation, project planning, curriculum development, issue research, and UCCP’s philosophy of youth-led project-based learning. As part of their training the LDI participants, like the youth they’ll be working with, have to collectively identify an issue, create a media project, prepare a presentation, and facilitate an activity. Through the experiential learning process, the LC-in-training gain a better understanding of the challenges they’ll face in supporting a youth-driven community engagement project.

Five outstanding young people completed the LDI this summer, producing a powerful project on the representation of women in the media. We are excited to welcome them to the Leaders Corps: Lynsey Graeff and Jessica Arce who will be working with POPPYN, Taneka Price and Adeoyin Otolorin ‘Dee’ who will be working with VOICES and Norman Scott who will be working with the POWER Internship.

Summer Academy 2010

The UCCP concluded its 2010 Summer Academy with a genuine triumph. On August 10th we hosted what will hopefully become an annual tradition – the Summer Summit – a day long event engaging youth and allies in interactive workshops, film screenings and community presentations.

The 2010 Summer Summit was an example of UCCP’s Youth Leadership in action. It was planned and facilitated by this year’s Leadership Development Institute participants – 18 and 19 year old youth training to become part of our Leaders Corps. The LDI participants created flyers, signs and program agendas, MC-ed the event, directed the audience to appropriate destinations, ordered and served food and made sure everything ran smoothly. They did a fantastic job and gained an experience in organizing and coordinating events that will be useful in their work at the UCCP and in colleges they heading to in the Fall. In addition to their preparation for the final event, the LDI participants learned many aspects of youth leadership development, lesson planning and facilitation and created and facilitated activities for younger youth from UCCP's programs and a new partner this summer - Cradles for Crayons.

Our second year cohort of Youth Action Scholars had the opportunity to test their workshops on Education and Race, Culture and Mass Media that they have been designing and practicing over the summer. The Scholars created 4 workshops on: how oppression affects education, contemporary representations of blackface in the media, where school funding comes from and how it works and analyzing symbols in popular and ancient cultures. They did a great job facilitating and engaging their workshop audience in interactively learning critical issues and applying them to their own lives. If you or your organization is interested in hosting a YAS workshop, please contact Phil Scott at apscott@temple.edu.

The Summit also features a gallery exhibit and documentary screening by a group of 10 students who participated in a PhotoVoice process of documenting positive and negative aspects of their Philadelphia communities through digital photography. Graciously hosted at Tyler School of Art’s beautiful Student Lounge, the exhibit, entitled “The Ghetto is Not Our Final Destination” showed Philadelphia from the eyes of these youth. Their documentary elaborated on issues of safety and violence in Philadelphia. The PhotoVoice project is especially grateful to our partners Maria Kefalas, Jill Chonody, Jill Welsh and Shayna McConville for supporting the group through contributions of finances, facilitation and facilities!

Finally, this summer’s three introductory VOICES groups presented their films on Violence, Teen Parenting and STDs. The groups spent 6 weeks learning essential skills including teamwork and public speaking while identifying a collective issue, researching about it and working together to create a film to address it. The groups created informative and engaging videos and power point presentations that they presented to an audience of youth and adults and received feedback for their work.

We as the UCCP staff and Leaders Corps feel incredibly privileged to have had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks with these amazing and inspiring young people.

Summer Academy 2009

This summer, the UCCP supported over 90 youth in becoming more confident and effective leaders! Below we report on our two regular summer programs - the Temple Youth VOICES Summer Academy and the Leadership Development Institute. You can read about the other cool projects we supported this summer here and here and learn about our new big organizational initiative - the Youth Action Scholars!

VOICES 1.0

This summer 28 brand new Philadelphia youth participated in a 6-week Temple Youth VOICES introductory curriculum. Working in two groups and engaging in community awareness activities, critical thinking and media production, the students created two of the best first time short films the summer has ever seen. These youth were instructed by Leaders Corps members Taesha White (Sophomore @ St. Joseph's University) Nastassia Harewood (Graduated from Maritime Academy Charter HS), Kianni Brooks (Freshman @ Eastern University PA) and Reese Acree (member of V-Media), all of whom had been Temple Youth VOICES participants in the past.

The film The Educated Thinkers explores the many dimensions of addiction prevalent among youth today. Through confessions of teens addicted to everything from the Internet and video games to marijuana and sexual promiscuity, the film addresses the dangers and consequences that lurk in young people’s everyday environments. The group presented their project to 10 judges and thousands of other youth at the annual Philadelphia Youth Network Summer Project Convention.

Begging for Love is a film that explores the thin line between child abuse and parental neglect. Through two interconnected stories of young women that suffer from dysfunctional relationships with their parents, the film demonstrates the possible causes and the tragic consequences of family abuse.

Leadership Development Institute

For the fourth summer in a row, the UCCP ran a Leadership Development Institute for young adults interested in becoming part of UCCP’s Leaders Corps. The 6 week institute is open to former Temple Youth VOICES and POWER Internship participants who have graduated from high school and to Temple University students who have interned with the UCCP in the past. The students receive training in curriculum building, lesson planning, project management and facilitation and explore the concepts of youth oppression and empowerment, political education, and personal development. To apply their newly gained knowledge, the LDI students facilitated ice breakers with VOICES 1.0 participants and conducted an all day workshop at the Norris Square Neighborhood Project on Recycling and Urban Gardening. They also received basic training in media production and created a short promotional film for the UCCP.

At the completion of the institute, the trainees are eligible to apply to work with the UCCP in the Fall as facilitators for VOICES afterschool and POWER internship programs. This year’s LDI was facilitated by current LC members Bo Nicholson (Temple Graduate and now first year teacher at Our Mother of Sorrows) and Earl Joseph (who graduated from CCP last may and is beginning his first year at Temple University).

Educate. Reform/Reflect.

Its official! June 3rd the POWER interns wrapped up the Spring 2009 POWER Internship with two OUTSTANDING events.

As part of their social change project at the POWER internship, high school juniors and seniors planned, organized and facilitated workshops on community issues of their choice.

The "Why Youth Homelessness?" event held at St. John's Hospice and Shelter was a great success. The interns presented a PSA on youth homelessness that they shot and edited to the staff and the men staying at the shelter. Following the PSA, the interns led a discussion about the invisibility of youth homelessness compared to the homelessness of adults. The staff and residents were very receptive and had lots of great questions. One of our interns, who is a homeless youth, gave a testimony and told her story about her life and what it is like to be homeless at such a young age. Overall the staff and residents were wowed by the interns' PSA and message about youth homelessness and all the interns did a a great job facilitating their activities and dialogue.

The "Can You Hear Us?" event held at Temple University with the Caring People's Alliance parenting group, from R.W. Brown community center, was also a success. The interns prepared a workshop for parents and teens to understand the importance of communication, and suggested strategies to build a healthy, communicative relationship. The interns led original activities such as Trading Places, in which the parents played the child and the child played the parent. They acted out scenarios and both parties had a chance to experience the others' perspective. The parents were reminded about how powerless a child can feel and the students realized what a huge responsibility raising a child is. The interns received several requests from the parents to come out to other community centers and facilitate the same workshop for other parents! The facilitation and leadership in this workshop was phenomenal and each intern really stepped up and felt they impacted the lives of the workshop participants.

Congratulations Spring 2009 POWER Interns! The UCCP is delighted to welcome several of the POWER graduates to our summer Leadership Development Institute to receive training as future Action Scholars and Leaders Corps members: Janay Eleazer (Sp 2008), Christiana Sanders (Fall 08), Brianna Jenkins (Fall 08), Terrell Merrill (Fall 08), Daniel Nunez (Sp 09), Chalisa Morrison (Sp 09), Roy Fearon (Sp 09), Stafford McCrea (Sp 09), Lyesha Fleming (Sp 09) and Bianca Cruz (Sp 09).

Summer Academy 2008

WHAT IS YOUR VICTORY? This was the question posed of the 2008 Temple Youth VOICES Summer Academy participants. Over 60 youth and young adults from across the city of Philadelphia spent six weeks challenging themselves and each other to work on achieving small every day victories, thus laying the groundwork for realizing larger, collective victories. Some of their victories included a lively blog discussion of media literacy and youth representation, a car wash that raised $500 to support a new ‘for youth, from youth’ scholarship program for Philadelphia high school students, numerous youth driven community workshops and special events, a magazine of youth writing on leadership development, and a premier of Buggin’ Out News, a youth-created satirical newscast showing how stereotypes are constructed in the media.

VOICES Invite Parents and Family to Get Involved

On July 8th, the Temple Youth VOICES Summer program hosted a parent night. At the event, parents from youth involved in the program came to Temple University for a few hours of fun and conversation about social issues and their role in making positive social change.

Genisha Wallace and Bo Nicholson, two UCCP Leaders Corps members, organized the agenda. Youth participating in the summer program presented on the projects which are currently in progress among their groups. The groups include the Youth and Media Project, Youth Action 4 Peace and the Leadership Development Institute.