Workshop Examples

Kennedy High - Richmond, CA

 

Through our long-term Leadership Development Program we have helped create change at John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond, California.  We have worked with these kids to improve their school and community.

 

Conflict surrounds these students’ lives.  Richmond has been named the most dangerous city in California, after the homicide rate tripled over last year, making it more challenging to focus on school.

 

Unfortunately, more students drop out of high school than graduate.  Only three percent of the students graduate with the required courses necessary to attend a U.C. or California State University.  On the Academic Performance Index the school is rated as a one, on a scale from one to ten (ten being the best score).

 

Our goal has been to provide these students with the ability to improve their relationships and prevent conflict around them.  We hope to inspire them to prove the statistics wrong, both in and out of the classroom, and learn to see something other than the hopeless negative images that surround them.

 

Former students still come up to in the community to tell us how much our work has meant to them.  They say they won’t ever for get it.

 

We are now brining our work to other schools in the Richmond area.

A

Public

Benefit

Corporation

The statistics students encounter:

  52% - 4 year drop out rate

 

  75% - free lunch

 

  778 - average SAT score (1600 possible)

 

  81% - Socio-economically Disadvantaged

 

 

Source:

Education Data Partnership

www.ed-data.k12.ca.us

Program Focuses at Kennedy High:

  The Conflict Mediation Group

 

  The Varsity Football Team

 

  The After-School Program

 

  The Athletes to Elementary Mentor Program

    (under development)

Winners’ Camp - Honolulu, HI

 

This was our second year at Winners’ Camp.  The kids come from a variety of backgrounds - privileged families to foster homes - and spend a week at a retreat in the mountains.

 

We lead our basic 90 minute workshop, “Be The Change,” with the kids. We then spend the rest of the day getting to know them.  Though we are teaching them we are constantly learning ourselves.

 

The 90 minute workshop is the same workshop our team leads in schools around the country.  We call it “inspirational conflict management,” and the kids learn to treat themselves and others with kindness and respect.

 

Silveira Elementary - San Rafael, CA

 

We have lead workshops with individual classes a number of times at Mary Silveira Elementary School.  This was our first year doing a school wide assembly, with all 350 kids from kindergarten to 5th grade.  We did a 45 minutes presentation to the entire school then lead two additional workshops, each with half the 5th grade.

 

The program went especially well and we have since repeated this format at other elementary schools around the Bay Area.