Moving On & Moving In...

As some of you know, Alison (Alie) Huxta served as the UCCP’s VISTA for two years, during which time she took what was a very small POWER Internship program with a handful of students from a couple of high schools and built it into a truly POWERful part of the UCCP’s Leadership Development Continuum serving 30-35 juniors and seniors from over 20 high schools each year. The issues that these students have taken on during their internships (e.g. sexual violence; excessive consumerism and environmental sustainability; teen pregnancy; and media influence on youth), the energy and passion that they bring back to their schools and their fellow students and the written and verbal evaluations of the program from both participants and teachers, provide ample evidence of the amazing impact of Alie’s work. Alie also played a major role in shaping the Youth Action Scholars, the newest part of our Continuum, in which youth serve as peer educators on critical issues facing their communities and their schools. Despite our best efforts to keep Alie within the UCCP, she has decided to take a much needed “chill.” The entire UCCP family wishes Alie all the best as she travels, on foot and by car, through the back roads of the US. We are confident that she will make many discoveries and share them all with us when she returns. We can’t wait to hear the stories!

We are thrilled to welcome back Johannah Bennett, a former Leaders Corps member, who will become our new VISTA and who will coordinate the POWER Internship. Although Johannah left the Leaders Corps in 2009, she never really left the UCCP. She has formally collaborated with us from her positions with other organizations and, as the consummate networker, has always sought out exciting opportunities for the UCCP. Johannah already has a long list of plans for the POWER Internship and for the UCCP overall. I know they will be innovative, ambitious and lead to many fruitful prospects. If Johannah has not reached out to you yet, she will be doing so shortly. Let’s give her a wonderful welcome back!

Going National: Redefining What Civics Education is About

In early September, the UCCP joined four other organizations in Boston for two days of intensive sharing, brainstorming and visioning on how best to prepare young people to be lifelong participants and leaders in the civic and political spheres. The organizations represent geographic and programming diversity but all share our passion for equipping young people with the skills, knowledge, and values that enable them to have an active voice in the issues that matter to them and to the larger society. The meetings resulted in a commitment to collaborate on promoting and expanding the practice of Action Civics, a process through which young people identify and address issues of importance to them through research, constituency building, action and reflection. Action Civics meets youth where they are and supports and values their voice, knowledge, experience and perspective. The organizations will share practices and tools, reach out to other organizations engaged in similar work, and develop strategies for re-defining the way civics is understood and practiced in schools and after school settings. We are thrilled to be part of this timely and critical work with CIRCLE (Tufts University in Massachusetts), Earth Force (Denver), Generation Citizen (Boston and Providence, RI), Mikva Challenge (Chicago) and Youth on Board (Boston). Stay tuned for updates on this exciting campaign.

Funding Updates

We are extremely pleased to announce that the UCCP has been awarded three year grants from both the Pew Charitable Trusts and the William Penn Foundation. The Pew grant is to support our Progressive Youth Leadership Development Continuum while the William Penn Grant is to help us better align our activities and the activities of other out of school time providers with the city and school district’s educational priorities of decreasing the dropout rate and increasing the number of Philadelphia students who enter and complete college. We are proud to be a key part of these important goals. We also extend a deep thanks to YOUTHadelphia, the Youth Philanthropy Committee of the Philadelphia Foundation, for its support of our Youth Action Scholars initiative and to PHENND (the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development) for providing funding to help us launch our newest initiative, Youth Action News. Finally, we thank the wonderful individuals who gave generously to help us out in these hard economic times.

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.

UCCP helps youth at StarFinder develop leadership & planning

During the Spring of 2010 the UCCP worked closely with over 35 young people from the Starfinders Senior Leader Program, on UNICEF’s “Tap Project” and the “Starfinder Summer Camp.”

For 6 weeks Leaders Corps members Johannah Bennett, Gary Browne and Mosi Blaylock worked alongside the youth to develop a marketing strategy to raise money and social consciousness for UNICEF’s World Water Week. We used this as a springboard to assist the youth in further developing their public speaking, networking, event planning, leadership, and facilitation skills. As a result, the youth were able to not only educate themselves but spread awareness about the global water crisis. In the end, the youth were able to raise close to $300.00! (1$ a day will provide water to one person for 40 days and $500.00 will provide a hand pump for an entire community!)

The UCCP also partnered with Starfinder to help the youth leaders design its Summer Camp, which is an opportunity for many young people to experience their first part time jobs. To plan for it, we spent another six weeks helping to develop each student’s leadership abilities and self-confidence through various activities. Youth were given the opportunity to enhance their public speaking and communication skills, develop and implement activities, and understand the importance of effective planning, goal setting, and time management.

The UCCP was impressed by the youth's commitment and is looking forward to working with Starfinder Foundation in the future.

UCCP @ the Y-HEP Empowerment Summit

On June 26th, the UCCP proudly collaborated with the Youth Health Empowerment Project to facilitate 3 workshops for their “One City, One Voice: Education & Empowerment Summit. “

Leaders Corps members Kenny Williams-Medley, Gary Browne, Reese Acree, Johannah Bennett and Earla Joseph in collaboration with our Youth Action Scholars Roy Fearon and Ralph Lemar facilitated 3 interactive workshops:

• “Developing Youth Leaders” (for adults),
  
• “WORKSHOP IN A BOX”(for youth peer educators!)
  
• “MEDIA 4 UR CAUSE” (for all!).
  

The summit was a great success – fun, inspiring and empowering. We hope to continue a productive and supportive relationship with Y-HEP in the future.

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!

POWER goes back to school

The Fall 2009 POWER Intern groups closed out their sessions with two very successful presentations for their high school peers at Mariana Bracetti Academy. Both groups produced Public Service Announcements and designed interactive workshops on their chosen community issues: Sexual Violence and Exessive Consumption = Environmental Degradation. Showing a PSA entitled "Bent But Not Broken," the Sexual Violence group led a health class in a discussion about Rape, Molestation, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking, highlighting their causes, effects, and what to do if you are a victim. The Excessive Consumerism group challenged an environmental science class at Mariana Bracetti Academy with a provocative and creative PSA called "Do You Really Need a Bag?" Scattering plastic bags around the classrooms they asked students to imagine having their space look this way every day. They offered practical tips on recycling and reusing plastic that they learned in their meeting with Philadelphia's Director of Sustainability Katherine Gajewski.

See the Excessive Consumerism group's video below:

2nd Annual Power Breakfast

We are excited to report that our 2nd Annual POWER Internship Breakfast at the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia (UCCP) on May 13th brought together many of our current, past, and possible future schools together to appreciate the work we have done together and learn more about the other opportunities provided by the UCCP.

In attendance was South Philadelphia High School, West Philadelphia High School, Parkway NW High School for Peace and Social Justice, Marianna Bracetti Academy Charter School, Carver High School for Engineering and Science, YouthBuild Charter, Roxborough High School, Parkway West High School, and William Penn Charter. Several current POWER interns, Nyki Sanders, Fatimah Simpkins, Bradley Harley, Jabari Jackson, and Felicia Houston came to present about their projects and experiences so far.

Because of the cooperation of the schools we work with this year we have been able to bring together students from 17 different Philadelphia schools to address problems in their communities. Interns have created workshops, Public Service Announcements, and community events to bring awareness about these issues and urge other youth to take action. All of this would not be possible with out the collaboration with POWER Partnership schools. At the breakfast we celebrated these victories and also discussed ways to make the POWER internship stronger.

From this meeting the UCCP gained a sense of what each school is willing to contribute to the POWER relationships, including joint fundraising, writing letters of support, helping with recruitment and inviting POWER interns to do workshops at their school. Furthermore, everyone gained a sense of community around creating programs that help youth have a voice for change in their communities and schools.