by Jim Richmond

This article profiles seven exciting CYD programs, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that are making a difference. According to Geraldine K. Brokkins of the Foundation, "The people behind these programs, and participating in them, are educational pioneers. They understand the real challenge, the real opportunity, in mobilizing and strengthening all the important systems that support the learning of young people -- inside and outside the traditional classroom. They know you have to engage the total community -- schools, youth-serving agencies, parents. Everyone has to see that it's their responsibility to support your people's learning."

Support Young People's Growth and Job Readiness
How does an agency incorporate a Maritime Museum with educational programs that ensure youth receive relevant job training? How does a community train parents to advocate with school administrators for measurable educational reform? How does a segregated Mississippi community overcome centuries of racism and oppression to mobilize young black people in community service? And how does one community of recent immigrants help youth and their families first to dream the "American Dream" and later, to reach it?

The answers come from all parts of the United States, and they are as varied as the backgrounds of the youth involved in their programs. They also share common themes: they merge programs for youth with economic development efforts, job training, and education; they are creative responses to old problems, and-most importantly-they're working.

They're working in urban centers like Boston, Oklahoma City, and Baltimore, and in rural areas like Quitman County Mississippi; Marquette, Michigan, and small towns throughout Kentucky. Their combined efforts and successes make a difference not only for youth but also for each of their communities, and they illustrate strategies that guide youth and education programs at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations.

According to Geraldine K. Brookins, a vice president-programs at the Foundation,

The people behind these programs, and participating in them, are educational pioneers. They understand the real challenge, the real opportunity, in mobilizing and strengthening all the important systems that support the learning of young people-inside and outside the traditional classroom. They know you have to engage the total community-schools, youth-serving agencies, parents. Everyone has to see that it's their responsibility to support young people's learning.

Creating Living Classrooms
James Piper Bond is one of those pioneers. As president of the Living Classrooms Foundation, Bond heads an organization that will serve more than 50,000 students this year in 35 programs. "Our philosophy," according to Bond, "is based on the concept that students, especially those who need extra guidance-placed in small classes in challenging settings, respond to real-world academics and the 'world of work' far more readily than they do to traditional classrooms."

And Living Classrooms appear throughout the "real world" of Baltimore, Maryland. It can be found aboard one of the Foundation's eight historic ships for land/sea expeditions to explore the environmental science and history of the Chesapeake Bay region; in year-long, high school accredited job-training programs at the Maritime Institute; at the Weinberg Education Center for youth living in East Baltimore Enterprise Zone neighborhoods; and in Project SERVE, which has put 36 young adults to work rehabbing seven houses, and boarding up 1,300 homes in the East Washington area of Baltimore.

With support from a variety of funding sources, including the Kellogg Foundation, Living Classrooms launched the Frederick Douglass After School Program, which serves between 50 and 100 youngsters each day, in Baltimore's Johnson Square Neighborhood. It also started a 40-week long program that integrates job-training and academic remediation for young people, ages 16-20, who have been in trouble with the law.

Through one of the 300 individual schools in the area, the Living Classrooms Foundation reaches students in their neighborhood through community-based projects and through city and state agencies-and engages them in learning.

Because the Living Classrooms Foundation also operates the National Historic Seaport of Baltimore, including the ships of the Baltimore Maritime Museum, Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, the USS Constellation, and Fort McHenry, it is well positioned to combine youth development with community and economic development and job training.

It is establishing job training and business partnerships with such giants as Marriott Hotels, United Parcel Service, and others. Bond believes these partnerships will eventually be a major factor in providing services and shelter for more than 16 million Baltimore visitors, many of whom come to view the Inner Harbor's tourist and historical attractions.

According to Bond,

People used to say: 'Yeah, that's nice. You take young people out on historic ships for a cruise.' But while we are very proud of our shipboard programs, they are only a part of what we do. Most of our programs emphasize the importance of technology in a changing workforce.

With 14 years under its belt, what has Living Classroom "learned" about what works, and doesn't work, with economic development, job training, and education? Bond believes key ingredients for successful community youth programs include a strong mission, a tight focus on youth development, experiential education, and inclusion of workforce development in a community setting.

Equating Education with Opportunity
Setting very high expectations for young people in the programs is also a key, according to Patricia Fennell, director of the Latino Community Development Agency in Oklahoma City:

Young people from deprived backgrounds, when they come to the United States, get a low paying job, buy an old car, and start thinking they've made the 'American Dream' come true. We want them to think beyond that to realize that education is an opportunity to get much, much more out of life.

Community youth development organizations need to be ready to push the community to action, she says. The Development Agency's Riverside Center, a multi-service facility that provides intergenerational programs for the Latino community, is a big part of that push. Nearly 20 agencies-including the Salvation Army, community college, community action agency, Catholic Charities, local banks, the small business administration and Oklahoma's employment and security commission- either have offices or offer programs at the Center.

It was a struggle to get the Center up and running. Riverside was formerly an empty school building covered with graffiti and located in an area of crack houses. The local school district board stalled two years before agreeing to sell it to the Development Agency. But the struggle solidified the surrounding community. More than 90 volunteers from the community worked on renovating the building, before professional contractors took over to complete the $2 million project.

The Center emphasizes a "team" approach to programming. It doesn't just offer courses or programs for youth or adults; it tries to ensure that youth and their family members participate. An example is the parenting program, which provides a 15-week exposure for the mother, father, and all the children "about what it's like to be a successful family in the United States," Fennell says.

She believes the Oklahoma City Public Schools are "in a state of crisis." In an effort to address the problems, the Development Agency offers programs in 17 public schools, which serve primarily Latino students. It's a matter-again-of setting very high expectations for kids and sticking with them.

Providing Life-Changing Experience
That philosophy is at the very center of The Food Project in Boston, which includes both extensive interviewing and a "worker contract" for each of the young people selected each summer for its seven-week farm program.

Last summer, the 200 youth working on The Food Project met those high expectations when they grew 180,000 pounds of organic produce and had more than 1,800 individual sales at the Boston Farmer's Market.

Greg Gale is codirector of the Food Project:

We want a diverse profile of young people-a few leader types, but more from the middle and at-risk youth categories. And they have to know the demands the program will place on their time, their spirit, and their 'back."

Graduates of the Food Project help conduct the interviews for each succeeding summer program. The project works hard to recruit applicants through churches, schools and nonprofit organizations. A good summer job ($125 a week) is the initial enticement for the youth participants, Gale says, but the summer ends up being a life-changing experience in terms of personal character, values, and commitment to both themselves and to other participants.

There is a theme for each week of the program, and the theme shapes the daily conversation of the young participants: community, hope, commitment, courage, initiative, responsibility, personal goals in life.

The graduates speak for themselves. Amelia from Newton, Massachusetts, says,

I have changed through the summer program. I have more determination and self-discipline. I feel stronger, more confident. I've made friends I hope will last. I have greater respect for the land and manual labor.

Among other areas, the Food Project is located in the Dudley Street neighborhood of Boston, a devastated area that included 1,300 vacant lots just seven or eight years ago. The vacant land is being recycled for urban agriculture, and the Dudley Street area is also serving as a primary recruitment area for the summer youth project.

Gale says there has been a shift in perception in how The Food Project looks for public school partners. It is developing partnerships in target neighborhoods, now involving 1,000 volunteers and some 700 young people in the urban agriculture effort:

We've learned that you can't effectively 'target' specific schools to work with. There may be excitement for youth programs at the top of the school system. But what you really need are teachers and administrators who have already had a positive, active experience with the Food Project, and who literally become champions within their own schools, and with their own students.

Overcoming the Racial Divide
The difficulty and slow process of engaging schools-for that matter all major segments of a community-to work with youth agencies has only been compounded by the economic and racial divide that Robert Jackson faces in Quitman County, Mississippi. Jackson runs the area's community development corporation in Marks, the seat of Quitman County.

It is an environment where seven generations after slavery, a few wealthy white families still control most of the land and wealth; and where the per capita income for blacks is one-third the national average, according to Jackson. In Marks, there is only one gym; there is no community pool. The closest movie theater is 20 miles away. African-Americans comprise about 60 percent of the County's population, but there were no black elected officials until the late 1970s.

Established in 1977, the Quitman County Community Development Organization (QCCDO) benefited early on from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation's Intermediary Support Organization program. That support helped QCCDO establish an office, gain nonprofit status, elect a board of directors, and hire support staff.

Initially, Jackson says, white civic and business leaders in Quitman County tried to prevent QCCDO from getting the necessary rezoning to buy and renovate an old building as its headquarters. He says there was also a public uproar when QCCDO sought to house a new daycare center in a vacant elementary school building, which was in the white part of town.

Today, QCCDO is the largest black-owned employer in Quitman County, with 27 employees and a budget of nearly $1 million. Its close ties with black churches have resulted in a host of joint programs and services, including a homeless shelter, meals on wheels program, a thrift store, and a food pantry.

QCCDO established Quitman County's first low-income public housing project and has constructed more than 40 new homes and rehabbed more than 80 owner-occupied homes.

These community development efforts go hand-in-glove with other QCCDO programs to serve young people. In neighborhoods not far from where QCCDO builds homes, the organization provides a Save the Children tutorial program, through which older students and volunteer adults tutor more than 100 at-risk students.

Another integral part of community and youth development is the young people's credit union. Young shareholders run the credit union, and through hands-on experience, learn important job skills and leadership, as well as how to save for their futures.

The Kellogg Foundation provided a grant to renovate space within the Quitman County Federal Credit Union at its headquarters building, open a teller window that would serve young people, purchase computer equipment to handle statements, and hire staff to manage and promote the program. Today, more than 475 youth under age 18 have established savings accounts. It costs three dollars to join, and an 11-member board of young people runs the credit union.

Jackson believes the youth credit union is a good model for helping young people learn how to manage their own money, and it also "feeds the growth of our adult credit union."

Giving Young People A Voice
Giving youth responsibility and expecting accountability is at the core of most successful community youth development initiatives, including those in Marquette, Michigan. Here, too, young people are learning by doing and the community and its youth are experiencing positive ripple effects.

Marquette, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is home to the first rural bureau of Children's Express (CE),* an international news bureau with young people ages 8--18 serving as editors and reporters. Prior to the start of this project, Children's Express had soley been an urban opportunity.

CE's mission is to give young people a significant voice in the world. Its other bureaus are in New York City, Washington, DC, Indianapolis, and London and Newcastle, England. Stories produced by Children's Express are distributed via the New York Times wire service and the Children's Express web page.

The Upper Peninsula Bureau is also unique in that it is the only CE with its own direct media outlet. Each month, the Bureau produces two full pages in the Marquette daily newspaper,The Mining Journal, covering items selected by the young people. A similar news publishing arrangement has been worked out between the Bureau and WMQT, the local "top 40" radio station.

As in Kellogg-funded youth projects elsewhere, Children's Express places high priority on both experiential learning and youth serving as role models. Kristina Kraus, assistant director of the Bureau, said reporters, ages 8 through 13, decide what to cover; they also do their own research and interviews. Youth editors, age 14--18, guide reporters' work. They also tape record all of the interviews and debriefings. The editors then put the transcribed material together to form stories that appear in The Mining Journal and on WMQT radio. A recent CE masthead listed more than 40 youth reporters and 45 youth editors.

The Bureau is publishing a series of articles looking at religion and the role it plays in the lives of youth today. Another recent edition spotlighted the lives of children who live and travel with the Carson and Barnes Circus.

Why do youth participate in CE? "Our reporters and editors get to meet and interview really cool people, like Maya Angelou," Kraus notes. "They also learn good public speaking, interviewing, and telephone skills, and they learn how to write really well. We are seeing whole generations of young people come through the Bureau."

This type of effort, which affects young people's lives and learning, can promote systemic improvements in communities, institutions, and policies, and in many cases, address the quality of formal, pre-K through 12th grade educational institutions.

Moving from the Abstract to the Concrete
Systemic change also is being made possible through the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership. The Institute is sponsored by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence in Kentucky, and it was founded specifically to engage parents in improving public schools.

According to a Temple University study of grade- and high-school students, 51 percent of children whose parents were highly involved in their schools received mostly A's. Yet, nearly one-third of American parents are seriously disengaged from their children's education. Only about one-fifth of parents regularly attend school programs and nearly one-third of students say their parents have no idea what they are doing in school. But, while parents are a key to productive change in public education, they too often lack high expectations for themselves, their youth, and their schools.

Bob Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee, says the Commonwealth Institute brings together parents and other community members, and provides training, information and experiences to help raise student achievement in their home communities. Each year, the Institute trains a cadre of about 200 parents from school districts throughout Kentucky. Every parent-participant is given concrete information and bar graphs on how student achievement in their local school compares to others in the state.

"It alarms a lot of them, especially when they see their school's performance going down, while others in Kentucky are going up," Sexton comments.

The alarm, however, is not enough, in itself, to mobilize parents for change. A recent national survey by the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that "very few of the nation's schools seek significant parental involvement on governance or academic matters." And too often, parents and community groups get caught up "and washed away in the abstract" and often-contentious public discourse over such things as ungraded primary education, selection of a new school superintendent, or a new teacher reward system.

The Institute teaches parents how to work effectively with teachers and school administrators, arms them with what Sexton calls "the power of information and data," and encourages each participant to select a specific project in their community that focuses on improving student achievement. "We believe in informing and preparing the individual parent-the person who can start a job and finish it at the local level," Sexton adds.

One way to prepare parents is the "Parents and Teachers Talking Together" (PT3) program, which helps teacher-parent groups identify the most pressing needs in their schools and then work together to solve them. A typical three-hour PT3 session, which Prichard Committee staff members can conduct, involves about 30 parents and teachers.

When they return to their home communities, parents' projects can take a variety of forms. One participant, Teresa Combs Reed, a 1997 Commonwealth Institute Fellow from Hazard, Kentucky, is encouraging all Perry County schools to conduct PT3 sessions this year. Another graduate, Maria Kenner, has helped sponsor a Science Night at Piner Elementary School in Kenton County, so parents can see education in action. Families work together on a series of experiments designed to teach them about the scientific method and encourage their family's participation in the school's annual science fair. Last year, Kenner added two more family nights at Piner, one focusing on reading and the other on diversity and world cultures.

Three other Commonwealth Fellows are now writing a manual titled "There is No Recess in Junior High School." The manual will feature questions solicited from sixth graders facing the sometimes daunting transition from elementary school to junior high, and the answers from school officials.

Finding Answers
Helping "find some of the answers" that build capacity of communities, educational institutions, youth-serving agencies, and parents to plan, develop tools and resources, and implement learning opportunities for all their young people is an ambitious, optimistic agenda-even for a charitable organization of the Kellogg Foundation's size and track record. But as the inventor of corn flakes and Foundation founder, W. K. Kellogg, once said, "Education offers the greatest opportunity to improve one generation over another."

His words echo in the communities and classrooms of Boston, Oklahoma City, Baltimore, Quitman County, Marquette, and Kentucky, where generations come together to learn and to improve learning, where new partnerships and new systems support young people's growth and job readiness, and where community development and human development walk arm-in-arm.