Project Summary

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Youth don't have to become drug dealers. They need something to do and positive youth supporting them. Out of a neglected park, we will create a space for youth to lead activities that promote nonviolence, common sense, education, faith and success. We will use basketball to do this.

About me

The 15 of us came together as a part of Hopeworks 'N Camden's Summer Hope Through School program. All of us wanted to be in this program, because it is a fun and interesting way to learn something new. We are always sharing and laughing. We work on computers and teach ourselves how to build web sites and how to make digital stories about our lives. We have a literacy director who helps us academically and we work with tutors on reading and math skills. Hopeworks helped initiate our project, but they gave us total freedom in deciding what we wanted to do. Mainly, we are interested in this grant because we think that the change we will lead is important to the future of our neighborhood. If we don't do it, it won't get done. We also want this project to be sustainable and know that we need money to keep it alive and to help make our activities really vibrate and lively. We have elected three leaders based on some qualities they exhibited in our beginning discussions. We chose one leader, Shakira, based on her ability to keep us focused and organized, another, Nefertiti, because she contributed the most when she spoke in the group, and the last, Waylen, because he stepped up and led some of our early discussions.