The petition
We, the undersigned, join with the All Stars Project in demanding that our elected officials establish Youth Development Centers in communities throughout the city.
Despite billions of dollars spent on our schools every year and decades of educational reform, young people in our inner cities continue to fail. That’s primarily because the traditional educational model does not sufficiently develop young people in such a way as to motivate them to learn. Many young people living in the vacuum of urban poverty must be helped to develop socially and culturally so that education and learning are even of interest. The current efforts to reform public education in New York City should be supported by outside-of-school Youth Development Centers.
Youth Development Centers will offer young people the kind of developmental, outside-of-school experiences that can balance their school learning, and counter the boredom and hopelessness they experience in our failing classrooms and communities. Using the All Stars Project’s youth development center on West 42nd Street as a successful model, these new centers will teach young people how to develop by introducing them to performance training, to the creative arts and the business professions; and to the world beyond their neighborhoods.
The new Youth Development Centers will provide children and teenagers with the opportunity to work with the city’s many business leaders, professional people, performing artists and producers partnering with the centers.
Young people who successfully complete the Youth Development Center program will receive upon graduation a Diploma of Development from the City of New York.
We, the undersigned, believe that Youth Development Centers will impact positively on the lives of millions of young people and immeasurably strengthen our communities and our city as a whole.
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