In April 2006, the YouthBuild Academy for Transformation held a Transformation Institute in Redondo Beach, CA for directors, staff, teachers, counselors, policy-makers, and funders from the youth development, youth leadership, youth employment, after-school, and education arenas. 300 participated in four separate events leaving more inspired, empowered, skilled, connected, and renewed.
The April conference featured a unique transformational experience, including:
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An orientation for the YouthBuild USA's Young Leaders Council
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A Western region Multi-Site Gathering and Open Space
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Keynote speaker and 2001 Teen Slam Poet Champion Chinaka Hodge
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Graduate plenary lunch session personal stories of the power of transformation; networking reception with youth development leaders;
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Many Colors Reception/Creativity Night
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On April 13th and 14th, a LA CAUSA YouthBuild Site Visit Seminar: High Outcomes Through Social Justice Education was held complete with a visit to East LA.
Get the Keynote and Youth Panel DVD with 2001 Teen Slam Poet Champion Chinaka Hodge from our eStore!
Click here to find out about our next Transformation Institute.
Click here to download the YouthBuild USA Events Calendar .
Click here to download the Executive Summary of the Outcomes, Data and Success! Workshop
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Chinaka Hodge, working the crowd
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Participants holding up names of people who have experienced transformation
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Taylor Frome, former executive director of YouthBuild Philadelphia helping folks with HUD budgets by the pool.
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Tizoc Brenes delivering a brilliant account of deficit thinking.
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(Left to right) Tanya Teller, Thami Dlamini and Olga Mpepele from Umsobumvo Youth Fund in South Africa speak about their partnership with YouthBuild USA.
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Chris Cato, Khepe-Ra Maat and participants from the Leadership Development Made Real workshop pose for a photo.
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Workshops
New Grantees Orientation (For HUD YouthBuild new grantees only)
Facilitators: Lissette Rodriguez & Andy Delgado
Now that you’ve gotten your HUD Youthbuild grant, what next? Learn the ins and outs of starting a YouthBuild program drawing on YouthBuild USA’s 25 years of experience in over 200 cities. This workshop covers basic start up issues, including: the essential components of a YouthBuild program, the centrality of leadership development, building a staff team, systems development, fiscal management, program operation, youth recruitment and orientation, and common pitfalls in program operation. The YouthBuild program may be the most challenging program you’ve ever worked with. Use the collective knowledge of the YouthBuild movement and start off on the right foot.
Introduction to YouthBuild Seminar (open to the public)
Facilitators: Taylor Frome & Kiarash Afcari
Interested in starting a YouthBuild program in your city or town? This participatory workshop will include an overview of the YouthBuild program design, an outline of a YouthBuild planning process, specific training on the HUD NOFA application process, sustainability planning, and start-up procedures. This training is intended as a hands-on working session for YouthBuild program planners. Organizations are encouraged to send at least two representatives.
Strengthening Classroom Practice: Literacy Strategies (open to the public)
Facilitator: Lew Gitelman
We all know that reading is crucial to student development. Unfortunately, many of our students become frustrated and apathetic towards reading. In this workshop we will provide the rituals, routines and strategies that will make for effective readers. We will discuss how to teach these strategies explicitly, empowering our students to have their own understanding of how to enter the text. We will learn how to assess diverse learners and implement a broad array of strategies to create lessons, activities and assessments that lead to active and independent learners that enjoy reading.
Home Builders Institute Construction Training (open to YouthBuild programs only)
Facilitators: Steve Cousins & John Hattery
Home Builders Institute, the workforce development arm of the National Association of Home Builders and HUD’s newest Technical Assistance provider is pleased to offer a certification workshop for its Pre-Apprenticeship Certificate Training Curriculum (PACT). Youthbuild Construction Trainers who participate will be certified to offer this industry recognized and validated Pre-apprenticeship Certificate to graduating students. Included in this session will be the various curricula support materials along with segments on lesson planning, the design of effective training stations, the instructor’s role in job placement, job site safety management and a preview of the re-validated & computer based revision of the PACT. If your students are graduating your YouthBuild program with out a recognized vocational certification, this session will be a positive step toward enhanced graduate and job placement outcomes.
Stress for Success (open to the public)
Facilitator: John Bell
Helping ourselves and our students deal with stress is key to young people’s success. Stress is the stimulus for all growth. The body and the mind get stronger when confronted with lifelong exposure to stress. Participants will learn ways to expand their capacity for stress, assess their current stress strengths, learn journaling techniques, complete body work, learn ways to change their daily stressors, and practice techniques for handling stress once it’s here, and finally, to create a balanced individualized plan for using stress for success.
Career Strategies for Youth (open to the public)
Facilitators: Tulaine Shabazz Marshall & Peter Twichell
Helping young people succeed after our schools and programs is what it’s all about. We’ve put so much hard work into young people’s development. Letting them go without adequate options and support is a disservice to our work and their progress. In this course, we’ll learn how to prepare young people for the world of work and how to structure our programs to provide support and resources after graduation.
Outcomes, Data, and Success (open to the public)
Facilitators: Jerry Kolker & Daryl Wright
YouthBuild USA’s Campaign for Excellence is designed to strengthen program outcomes across the national YouthBuild network. Are you wondering how you can achieve high outcomes, measure your success and use data as a way to affect strong programming? Come learn how to demystify the world of outcomes and data. In this course, directors, program managers and other leaders will learn how to align their entire organization around achieving high outcomes for young people. Participants will explore the differences between activities, outputs and outcomes and learn practical tools for incorporating data and outcome planning into our day-to-day work.
Leadership Development Made Real: Policy Committees (open to the public)
Facilitators: Chris Cato & Khepe-Ra Maat
25 years ago, before leadership development became a buzzword in youth work, the seed of the YouthBuild model was doing engaged leadership work with young people in East Harlem. One of the models they developed was the Policy Committee; a structured way to build leadership skills, while improving the quality of the program. Come learn a process that has been refined in hundreds of cities across America. We’ll take leadership development from a great idea to a practical reality.
51 Funding Streams for a Sustainable Program (open to the public)
Facilitators: Connie Ferris-Bailey & Judy Olsen
Operation Fresh Start, Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin currently has 52 sources of funding to support young people’s development. With a budget of almost 2 million dollars, effective fundraising and sustainability is key to the organization’s success and longevity over these last 35 years. Come learn, from the Executive Director and grantwriter of this successful comprehensive employment and training services program, the details on how to make multiple funding partnerships work for your program.
Achieving High Attendance and Retention (open to the public)
Facilitators: Caroline Hopkins & Jennifer Clammer
High attendance and retention is one of the key measures of program or school success. Unpack the program conditions that promote transformation through high attendance and retention: emphasizing a strong program culture, positive relationships, opportunities for leadership and service, concrete services, and clear pathways to a brighter future.
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Keynote Speaker
Chinaka Hodge
Chinaka Hodge gave a wonderful keynote with incredible poems and inspirational words for 300 youth workers. The DVD of her speech and poems is available here!
Chinaka, age 21, is a writer and spoken word artist. Originally from Oakland, California, Chinaka will graduate from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study in May of 2006. She was the San Francisco Bay Area Teen Poetry Slam Champion in 2001, and a member of team Berkeley/Oakland, winners of the (inter)National Teen Poetry Slam and Festival in 2000. She published her spoken word chapbook, Know These Limbs, in Fall 2002. She received co-writing credit for the stage production: Scourge, sponsored, in part, by the Creative Work Fund, which opened in May 2005, in San Francisco. Chinaka was also a recipient of Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia young author scholarship. Sample publications include the McSweeney's sponsored anthology, My Words Consume Me, and Newsweek Magazine. Her work has also been featured in Teen People Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, Scholastic Magazine, Current Magazine, The Annual Women of Color Film Festival, PBS, NPR, C-Span, KPFA and HBO's Def Poetry Jam.
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Transformation Practice Groups
Transformation Practice groups act as mini-learning communities in the context of the larger conference.
An important element of the Transformation Practice Group is time spent reflecting on our experiences and in supporting each other through problem solving, supportive listening and personal appreciations. It is intended to facilitate opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and to offer participants moral support and camaraderie.
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