Guest Speaker Impacts Youth
Dr. Thomas Stewart, managing partner of Symphonic Strategies, a consulting group from Washington D.C. specializing in strategic coaching to improve efficiency and performance, spoke at a luncheon event at the YO! Westside Center on December 21, 2007. The theme of his remarks was "Your Past Does Not Have to Dictate Your Future," and his story certainly bore out the truth of that statement. Dr. Stewart talked about his upbringing as a troubled teen living in a dysfunctional family, winding up on the wrong side of the law. He was well on his way to becoming immersed in the criminal justice system, when his downward spiral was reversed by the intervention of an influential mentor.
The information Dr. Stewart shared had a positive effect on the more than 100 youth who attended. Participants were inspired to look beyond their present circumstances and dream of a successful future. Providing an extra bonus, Dr. Stewart distributed six $50 gift certificates to participants who listened closely enough to his presentation to remember the answers to questions based on some key incidents in his life and could correctly guess his age.
Dr. Stewart holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where his dissertation focused on the evolution of prisons in America and their impact on inner-city communities. After graduate school, he received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Harvard Society of Fellows, where his research focused on understanding the salient social issues facing urban children and families and devising strategies to address their root causes. He was the Founding Executive Director of the SEED (School for Educational Evolution and Development) Public Charter School of Washington, D.C., a college and professional preparatory residential public charter school that is now considered one of the most novel and successful charter schools in America. |
YO! Partnership Network
On November 27, 2007 Karen Sitnick, director of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development and Edward Sabatino, executive director of the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition (HEBCAC) jointly convened a new YO! Partnership Network to increase public awareness of the challenges faced by disconnected, out-of-school youth and to promote effective solutions to address and fund these programs and projects.
Together this group will work to sustain current funding levels; explore expansion of youth development service options; promote a results-driven model and promote positive impact data; open doorways to special populations such as juvenile offenders and foster care youth; and explore and promote innovative strategies to enhance program effectiveness.
YO! Partnership Network members range from program participants and their parents to researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health; and from non-profit agency’s leaders who are servicing youth to political leadership. This group will continue to meet every other month. The next meeting is scheduled for January 29, 2008 at the HEBCAC Center. |
