Teen Empowerment
From Free net encyclopedia
Teen Empowerment is a nonprofit organization located in the South End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
Teen Empowerment is focused on helping urban youth learn and practice community-organizing skills while working to improve their neighborhoods, and also works with them to develop leadership skills. Its programs are based on the popular education model, so that those hired as youth organizers identify the problems facing their communities, and then develop and implement plans to address them. The organization also has programs located in a number of high schools in the City of Boston, and also organizes an annual "Youth Peace Conference" conference to bring urban youth together with advocates and community leaders from the Greater Boston area.
Teen Empowerment was founded in 1992 by Stanley Pollock during a period when an unusually high number of teenagers had been murdered by other teenagers in gang-related violence in Boston. In 2003, Teen Empowerment youth became involved in connecting their work on issues of peace and reducing violence in Boston's communities to the peace movement that was opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and played a major role in organizing a 50,000-person rally on Boston Common on March 29, 2004.