TEEN EMPOWERMENT ROCHESTER, NY
TE Rochester Youth Conference
Saturday, November 8
Breaking Generational Curses
Rochester's 5th annual Teen Empowerment Youth Conference drew hundreds of youth to Monroe High School for a thought-provoking stage presentation featuring a youth-written play and speeches by young people. The day also included an information fair with many local agencies offering their resources to youth. Read about it in the Democrat and Chronicle.
The conference was sponsored by the City of Rochester and Mayor Robert J. Duffy, the Rochester City School District, Wegmans, and WDKX.
Download a conference flyer.
Mayor's Youth Advisory Council Hosts Forum at City Hall,
Writes Report on Youth Issues
Teen Empowerment coordinates and facilitates Rochester’s Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. In June, the council organized a standing-room-only forum for youth at Rochester City Council chambers. (Download speeches by young people delivered at the forum.) In August, as a follow-up to the forum, the youth council released a report entitled "Youth Priorities in Action." Read about the report and the Advisory Council in the Rochester City Newspaper. See it on R News.
To view the entire forum, which was filmed live, go to RNews On-Demand, Channel 108 on Time Warner Cable in Rochester.
Rated Real 2: The Resurrection of Hip Hop
On Saturday, October 13, 2007, the 4th annual Youth Conference and SpeakOut in Rochester brought together hundreds of youth to explore the impact of Hip Hop on youth culture. Participants in the conference examined where hip hop came from with its roots as a community-based tool to unite, empower, and fight oppression, versus where it is today as a largely commercially driven form of self-oppression. From these understandings, youth strategized how to concretely "take back hip hop" to heal violence and promote positive social change.
Site History
In 2003, TE began to implement its adolescent intervention and prevention strategy in Rochester. In the fall of that year, TE staff interviewed more than 120 applicants and hired ten teens to organize Rochester's first citywide, youth-run conference. The conference, held March 6, 2004, engaged over 400 youth and adults in a daylong exploration of the relationship of youth violence to the lack of vocational, educational, and recreational services.
In the fall of 2004, the Rochester site interviewed more than 130 teens for jobs as youth organizers and launched a full-scale TE program, with the support of the Wilson Foundation and the Rochester Area Community Foundation. Since that time, TE youth organizers have organized numerous events, including four full-scale youth conferences, to involve their peers in confronting Rochester's serious problems with gangs,guns, and drugs. In addition, they have been working with policeofficers through the Youth-Police Unity Project, funded by the Andrus Family Fund.
See RNews--"Teen forum at City Hall" for news coverage
about Teen Empowerment's Youth Forum at City Hall in
November 2005.