On April 4, 2008,
Diario HOY (TODAY
Journal), an international news publication, reported on Boys & Girls Clubs
of America's Teen Town Hall meeting held in Los Angeles on March 31. Below
is the English version. For the report in Spanish, visit
Diario HOY.
In Their Words
More than 1,500 Keystoners and their advisors convened in Garden Grove,
Calif., March 27-30, for the 41st National Keystone Conference, a
leadership summit for teens, created by teens. Hear
what they have to say on the
My Club My Life YouTube
page!
Young people
worried about violence and school drop out rates
By Gloria Angelina Castillo, contributor to Diario HOY
April 4, 2008 – Hollywood, Calif. – A group of teenagers met this week
to express their concerns about crime, violence and school dropout rates
– some of the problems they face in their schools and communities.
Demetrice Tuttle, Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s National Youth of the
Year, began by announcing the results of a teen survey conducted during
a retreat organized by BGCA on March 27 of this year.
Tuttle mentioned that 67% "of teenagers know of someone who dropped out
of school. The two most common reasons were: one, that nobody cared, and
two, that violence and crime were so prevalent that they did not know
how to handle the situation.”
Another participant, Anthony Luna, a 17 year-old teenager who is
president of the Student Leaders Executive Program of the Boys & Girls
Club of the Los Angeles Harbor, stated his concern about the number of
students that carry a weapon to school, as was revealed by the results
of the survey.
Review the results of
BGCA's online survey of more than 1,100 teens regarding the
issues they feel are important.
“The survey indicates that 22% of
respondents know of students that carry a weapon,” Luna mentioned. However,
he believes that this figure is higher, due to the fact that "in my school,
approximately 80% [of the students] carry a weapon, not because they want to
hurt someone, but because they do not feel safe and need to protect
themselves.”
In addition, only 15% of the students that participated in the survey
believe that school officials are concerned about the issues affecting their
lives. During the meeting, participants proposed several solutions intended
to curb violence and reduce the number of students dropping out of school.
Some of the suggestions included: assigning more funding for schools,
creating new extracurricular programs and reinforcing existing ones.
“They are reducing funding for our schools, when they should really allocate
more funds and make scholarships more readily available,” said
seventeen-year-old Isaiah Alexander, a student at San Pedro High School. "I
think it’s hypocritical that school officials want us to receive a high
quality education," he added.
Approximately 1,100 members of the Boys & Girls Clubs and other teenagers
11-18 years old participated in the survey. This was the first of several
meetings of the organization that will be held at different locations around
the country. Judith J. Pickens, vice president of BGCA, invited teenagers to
continue discussing these issues at
http://www.myclubmylife.com.
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