The report draws on interviews and analyses from a dozen youth-oriented programs around the nation, including Leadership Excellence in Oakland.

Dereca Blackmon, the local nonprofit's executive director, said that among the four programs offered is "Stand For Something," where youths ages 14 to 18 learn organizing and entrepreneurial skills.

"They then do community projects," said Blackmon. "They've worked to bring more day-care services to a neighborhood or been involved with school reforms. Others have been in workshops on political education or dealing with racial stereotyping."

Community leaders say young people are looking for outlets to make positive changes and be part of solutions. For example, in Washington, D.C., a group of young women living in foster care homes wrote suggestions to improve the system that were later implemented by city officials.

The report says many young people want to embrace leadership skills, decision-making, knowledge of their community and ways to "give back." They also want to draw from programs that reflect their culture and provide forums. Many of the participants are from single-parent homes or from households dependent on public assistance.

Ronnell Clayton, 24, of Oakland, came to Leadership Excellence when he was 16 and returned two years later. "I started going right after high school," he said. "It saved my life. I would be dead or in jail if it wasn't for them.

"They had a young staff who would listen, and I learned a lot about having respect for others and especially being respectful of girls," he said last week.

Clayton's father is in prison, and his mother did some prodding to get her son to participate in Leadership Excellence. Today, Clayton works with a San Francisco nonprofit called Young Community Builders, which involves youth in a wide range of educational and economic development initiatives.

He said workshops on "behavior" and "racial issues" were insightful and illuminating. One exercise called "The Middle Passage," about slavery, made him thankful for what he now takes for granted.

"I just decided I wanted to make a change in my life," Clayton said.

Nedra Ginwright, a founding member and former executive director at Leadership Excellence, said the program started in 1989 on the campus of San Diego State University, where students were looking for ways to make social change.

Local participants meet on Wednesdays during the year. The Oakland program also offers trips to Africa, a Freedom School and a six-day summer camp in Santa Cruz called Camp Akili.

Leadership Excellence gets referrals from schools or probation departments. Ginwright said a flatbed truck carrying young performers goes into neighborhoods to offer rap and spoken word performances that youths relate to.

At Camp Akili, about 65 young people between ages 14 and 18 are assigned to smaller groups and blindfolded. Music they hear tells them they are in safe African villages.

Later, they are chained together and placed in tight quarters for the trip on slave ships across the Atlantic Ocean for America -- a journey called "the Middle Passage" by historians. In America, they hear the sounds of slaves being sold, and families separated and directed to plantations.

"From there they go to the present, where we are dealing with black-on-black crime and young minorities using the N-word or calling women bitches," said Ginwright. "They have to feel pain to work for change in their communities."

"(Leadership Excellence) saved my life. I would be dead or in jail if it wasn't for them." Ronnell Clayton, participant.

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Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
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