George Mason University allowed Youth Outreach Services to use the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (Department of Criminology, Law and Society) as a lab to assist in the research study of the job readiness mentor program. This program helps mentor those who are challenged with social injustice and exiting the criminal system. It also provides social, interpersonal and employment skills. Youth Outreach Services partnered with political leader Senator Jeremy McPike, various businesses and the legal system to address the effectiveness of rehabilitating and providing employment to juvenile offenders to reduce and eventually eliminate recidivism .
Michael C. May was one of our special quest speaker on establishing healthy relationships when dealing with authority (www.albo-oblon.com/attorneys/michael-c-may).
Another special speaker was Ms. Anne Sullivan, President of a woman-owned government relations business which specializes in the small business and entrepreneurial sector with offices in Washington, DC. and Virginia (http://www.madisonservicesgroup.com).
Our last session was on using art and music as therapeutic healing. Our special speaker was Ms. Kathleen Miller, a biology professor at Strayer University , but her true passion is art and music that brings forth transformation in people’s lives. She had he students undivided attention.
This class was the last of a five-week training session for college students to enter the juvenile detention centers to teach the full five-week program.
Students who played a major role in accomplishing this five-week program were as follows: Marco Padilla Caceres who is a senior pursuing a Bachelors of Science degree in Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, was one of the students who attended the class. He said, “This class is a leadership class,” and he sees himself as a leader who can use his degree to help redesign the way that juveniles think about themselves. Samantha Singh, who is a law student and wants to help conduct surveys, gather data, research, and keep count of how many juveniles and young adults who participated in the job readiness mentor program return to recidivism and how many will further their education, own business, and /or become employed. Shonari James, is a freshman at George Mason University who is majoring in public relations communications and minoring in business. She is our video technician who takes education out of the class room and into the community through Reality Education Television (RETV). Other students, whose pictures are not shown, are Phebe Ciemny who majors in Create writing, Deshane Jones who majors in filming, and Oladipo Victor Bashorun who is also a civic engineer student. Stay tuned until next time as we bring forth transformation, healing and social changes.
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