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We envision all students as healthy, confident, caring individuals. The Montgomery County youth Collaborative is strategically inclusive of social, educational and health alliances enhancing and empowering young people to make responsible decisions as representatives in a diverse community.
Join over 700 youth and adults as they come together for an exciting, fun filled event that will inspire and motivate them to make a difference in Montgomery County.
The Montgomery County Youth Collaborative is pleased to host the 2007 Teen Leadership Summit. Our theme this year will be: Making Tomorrow’s Decisions…Today!” Young people need the opportunity to be involved in resolving society's problems of violence because their experience--the experience of being young people who are sometimes at the heart of the problem as well as the solution--is unique and important.
The Teen Leadership Summit is a Youth-Led development and training program through which young people sharpen vital job and life skills and showcase themselves as resources, contributors and leaders. This project is a community improvement process in which youth and adults work together to build bridges of understanding and actually respond to the real challenges confronting their community.
The 3rd annual summit continues to target at risk young people and challenge them to invest in the communities in which they reside. Youth development and youth empowerment are critical components of this year’s summit. We have an effective collaborative that focuses upon re-directing our youth to enhance their ability to become positive and productive citizens within
Montgomery County and surrounding areas.
The Summit focuses upon: crime prevention, gender relationship issues, suicide prevention, conflict management, health and wellness education, and employment/educational career opportunities. Utilizing all of the available resources in the environment helps young people realize their full potential. The venue engages court-involved and other youth at-risk for violence, interpersonal family violence and sexual health behaviors.
This initiative seeks to ensure that youth have a strong voice in decision-making, to urge community leadrs to view youth as a resource to the city and financially commit to that vision, and, finally, to develop a strong support base for youth in the community.
The Youth Leadership Summit is a one-day event;
being
educational, creative, culturally-sensitive, engaging, empowering, and therapeutic.
Since its inception in 2005, this annual youth leadership conference has brought together over 1200 youth from the Montgomery County and surrounding communities. It incorporates product-oriented workshops, inspirational speakers, thought-provoking entertainment and community resources, to help youth recognize their power to help create a better world.
Our goals are:
To give youth a voice in determining positive outcomes within their communities, influence the manner in which both urban youth and Hip-Hop culture are viewed by society, expose youth to positive information about the importance of living violence/drug free and exploring educational and economic opportunities.
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To provide the necessary support for youth to make positive, healthy life choices, enhance safe schools, and intervene with students that exhibit behaviors of concern.
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Participants gather for between Summit Events.
We recognize that that young people need to be involved in solving society's problems of violence because their experience--the experience of being young people who are sometimes at the heart of the problem as well as the solution--is unique and important.
For this reason, Teen Leadership Summit is the premier youth leadership conference event for youth. Highlights include youth led workshops, thought-provoking discussions, product-oriented workshops led by industry experts, entertainment, and an interactive learning expo. This event offers a unique opportunity to network between the diverse population represented within the industry and professionals in youth development. Explore over 50 exhibits featuring the latest information on youth development! Finally become connected with others who are working hard to forge a brighter future for Montgomery County's youth.
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The Montgomery County Youth Collaborative is comprised of over 30 business, organizations, youth serving agencies, and volunteers within Montgomery County Ohio. This initiative is proud to announce that agencies from Green County Ohio will join us in 2006 to form an alliance inclusive of Xenia School District, Wilberforce & Central State University. We anticipate growth…join us in developing youth from Montgomery and surrounding counties to become productive citizens and leaders in for our community.
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Representatives from partner organizations . |
Vision Statement:
The Montgomery County Youth Collaborative envisions all students are healthy, confident, caring individuals and is strategically inclusive of social, educational and health alliances enhancing and empowering young people to make responsible decisions as representatives in a diverse community
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The Hip-Hop Teen Summit is a Youth-Led development and training program through which young people sharpen vital job and life skills and showcase themselves as resources, contributors and leaders. This project is a community improvement process in which youth and adults work together to build bridges of understanding and actually respond to the real challenges confronting their community.
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Summit Participants involved in panel discussion. |
We are excited that these youth play key roles in the planning process and during the summit itself. A youth advisory board provides guidance, direction, and areas of concern from a youth perspective. These youth are intimately involved in designing the summit and carrying out the plan. For example, they write press releases, speak with local business owners to secure support, make presentations to community groups to invite participation, and make arrangements for all of the logistical details.
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Adult Community Leaders and Youth work
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A new class of “untouchables” continues to be present within our inner cities, in particular the African American neighborhood community. Youth who are functionally illiterate, disconnected from school, depressed, prone to drug abuse and early criminal activity, and, eventually, parents of unplanned and unwanted babies. These are the children who are at high risk of never becoming responsible adults.
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Many youth are at risk for developing heavy patterns of drug use by virtue of a number of negative environmental factors. Those factors include daily exposure to alcohol and other drugs, often at the hands of friends and family, and the lure of the drug trade and the drug culture that surrounds them.
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BET's "Cousin Jeff" addresses the Summit. |
Our plan:
- Educate participants on current issues affecting youth
- Provide and open and respectful forum to engage youth in decision making opportunities for healthier lives
- Stimulate youth and community involvement
- Create a social network for people committed to change
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The statistics on violent behavior, especially among young people, are numbing. Even if we acknowledge that violence occurs at higher rates of incidence in some communities than others, most young people face greater risk of violence in their own lives than students of a generation ago, and all young people face the consequences of a world more resigned to violence. One of the central problems cited in traditional prevention programs is the tendency to "treat" the problem, rather than involve young people in "solving" that problem.
Montgomery County has been plagued with numerous incidents of teen violence within our community. So far this year five teens have been killed, and many others have been injured in shootings and other incidents of violence. Community groups have staged Anti-Violence Marches, Think Tanks, Vigils, and Teen forums to condemn the violence but to date a key component has been missing – the youth.
An engaging response that captures the attention of all youth appears to have been the 1 st Annual Teen Hip-Hop Summit held in September 2005 and sponsored by The Montgomery County Youth Collaborative. MCYC understood the need for resources to help troubled children needed to come from the wider community involvement and recruited members from various sectors and disciplines within Montgomery County. A grass roots effort was able to obtain commitments from individuals and organizations from over thirty (30) diverse backgrounds, pulled their resources to develop a collective response to teen violence and other risk factors for our youth. Successful implementation of the Teen Summit required the collaborative to think outside traditional boundaries and target primarily court-involved youth challenging them to take lead roles in addressing teen violence.
We found that Hip- Hop can directly reach youth and provoke thinking through its use of language, making this artistic expression an ideal tool to deliver effective prevention. Young people need to be involved in solving society's problems of violence because their experience--the experience of being young people who are sometimes at the heart of the problem as well as the solution--is unique and important. And with young people, one of the most effective ways to mobilize them and get them involved is through hip-hop.
The 2005 Teen Hip-Hop Summit has been a vehicle that has laid the foundation for future youth focused events. Plans are underway for mini-conferences and an even larger summit for 2006!
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The vision of the SCLC along with CSU Family Violence Prevention Services, City of Dayton Youth Services, Dayton Public Schools and numerous other volunteers was to establish a collaborative for Montgomery County to address the issues of Youth violence and related co-factors. The result was the first ever community initiative renamed the Montgomery County Youth Collaborative which included over 30 business, organizations, and youth serving agencies. Hip-Hop is a mechanism utilized by the collaborative to reach court involved and other teens facing the challenges of growing up in urban communities.
What Makes Us Unique?
The Summit is
- A youth development and training program through which young people sharpen vital job and life skills and showcase themselves as resources, contributors and leaders;
- A community improvement process in which youth and adults work together to build bridges of understanding and actually respond to the real challenges confronting their community.
| The 2005 Teen Hip-Hop summit was a powerful and dynamic intervention that engaged over 750 youth and adults in a leadership conference to date has been the largest youth conference in the county.
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We had such powerful speakers Cousin Jeff of The Cousin Jeff Chronicles on Black Entertainment Television (BET) and Bakari Kitwana, former Executive Editor of The Source Magazine and co-founder of the 2004 Hip-Hop Political Convention. Plenty of education, panel discussions…youth voices were heard and challenges made to the community. The day was an historical event where the village came together with one agenda…community development from a youth led perspective.
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