POSITIVELY BLACK
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Make Black History Relevant
As the people with the greatest longest and most accomplished history attempt to squash it all in the shortest month of the year, we need to pause and ask ourselves does this serve our best interests? Yes we need to know our history but we also need to realize as the first humans to walk the earth we have too much history to cram into a mere twenty-eight day span. The d’Zert Club Teen Summit 1000 program has the right idea. Teen Summit 1000 is the largest and fastest growing youth education and cultural enrichment program of its kind in the nation. Teen Summit 1000 is a two year program that entails a home study curriculum African Genesis authored by D. Edward Robinson, cultural tours, trips to Washington D.C. New York, Virginia, Detroit and Canada culminating in a free trip to Africa. The program is open to youth 10-14 years old and interested adults who want to serve as group leader/facilitators. Representatives from the organization cris cross the nation visiting Study Groups in New York, Newark New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Roanoke Virginia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. Current classes are in various stages of the process and enrollment in the 2005 class will expose youth of African descent to an opportunity to learn about their heritage and history and if they stick with the program, maintain their grades honor their fund raising obligations and complete the home study course work they will travel to Africa in 2005, free. Teen Summit 1000 general manager Ali Salahuddin and his staff will travel to the various cities that have expressed an interest or that already have Study Groups to promote the program. They also rely heavily word of mouth referrals as well as traffic from their Website Their goal for the 2005 group is to enroll 1,500 students and group leaders. “We’re enrolling 1,500 people nationwide and as soon as we reach that number enrollment will close. Right now we anticipate we will reach that number in February.” Group leaders must be over 21 years old and submit to police and child abuse background checks. They are required to study and learn the curriculum along with the students so they can help the students with their assignments as well as be familiar with the material in the curriculum. The goal of the program is to teach African and African American History in a way it enhances the self-image and self-esteem of the students. The trip to Africa is icing on the cake. In the past five years Teen Summit has visited Senegal, Ghana, and for the last three years they have traveled to Kemet (Egypt) to visit and study the genius of the Nile Valley Civilization.
For those of you Online registration is available via their Website. “They can go up on the Website and register Online, pull down the application, fill it out and pay the registration fee all Online.” The afternoon session was a general session for the class of 2004. African historian, lecture and author Anthony Browder was the guest speak who gave a Power Point presentation of understanding the media, decoding white supremacy and the importance of knowing African history. The session was held at Anderson Hall on the campus of Temple University and the auditorium was full of students and parents. During the general sessions guest speakers like Browder, Dr. Edward Robinson and Wayne Chandler address the youngsters. Salahuddin is working to bring in other scholars in the areas of African history, and culture. “We’re reaching out now for Runoko Rashidi, Professor James Smalls and Dr. Asa Hilliard so we’re trying to grow and bring in these kinds of people to educate our children and their parents about the greatness of African people.” He shared.
The recruitment and enrollment drive will continue until they reach their goal of 1,500. Long term Ali envisions taking 1000 students to Africa each year, hence the name Teen Summit 1000. For more information visit or call their toll free number 1 888 811-0249.
Junious
Ricardo Stanton produce and host a Internet
radio program titled
The Digital
Underground which airs live on Sundays from 12 pm- 2 pm eastern standard time on
www.NewBlackCity.com
www.harambe.com and BlackMic Radio come lets support our warrior!
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