Youth Empowerment Arts Mentoring Program

Towards our goal of lessening neighborhood tensions, we have been developing a mentoring program that connects artists with low-income urban youth in West Oakland. This reflects our commitment to creating significant immediate and long-term positive change to our neighborhoods through our own coordinated community service efforts. Our approach is four-fold:

• Assist youth in finding and expressing their creative voice through self-expression: volunteer artists teach their skills to individual or small groups of interested children.

• Address the deficiencies of our public schools and after school programs in providing children with necessary educational skills and information through volunteer tutoring.

• Facilitate direct exposure to a broad cross-section of experience and society to inspire and create opportunities for low-income urban youth: attending and discussing public events, and facilitating new opportunities for youth through partnerships and outreach.

• Address health and nutrition poverty issues via direct programmatic and material support (pending funding)

Currently limited to an experimental approach (pending permanent space and funding issues): tutor/teach children informally, attend and discuss public events, public parks, street clean-up.

Maintained by Director Joseph Neustadt