What Is The BusyMan Power Teen Program?
By:
Gradie Partlow
What is the BusyMan Power Teen Movement?
The BusyMan Power Teen Movement is a Violence reduction and Juvenile delinquency prevention strategy; and a life skills, literacy improvement and character building program. It is a school and community based intervention model targeting the twelve (12) to twenty-five (25) year old populations.
What services does it provide?
1. Psychological Counseling
2. Entrepreneurial Training
3. Recreational / Cultural Activity
4. Tutorial services; Coaching / Mentoring support
What does BusyMan Power Teen Movement seek to accomplish?
1. – Fifty percent (50%) reduction in High School drop-out rates
The BusyMan Power Teen Movement will work directly with schools to identify students who are at risk of dropping out of school. Power Teen Staff will seek to intervene by providing a range of services designed as an intervention to keep the student in school. The services at a minimum will include: Individual, group and family counseling, with a focus on identifying issues that impact negatively on the students’ ability to maintain satisfactory engagement in the educational process. Often times, poverty related issues become a distraction to many youth such that learning and educational pursuits take a secondary priority to basic unmet needs such as adequate food, clothing, shelter, personal safety and security. The BusyMan Power Teen Movement will provide a direct support network from the school environment itself to community programs designed to keep kids more insulated from negative social forces that are destroying too many young lives and disrupting the vital preparatory work of basic education and training necessary to produce functional young adults capable of meeting the challenges of adult life and responsibility.
2. –Fifty (50%) Reduction in youth violence
Through the efforts of the New L.I.F.E. Movement coalition, its outreach to street level organizational leadership has worked to establish a common ground of mutual understanding and agreement as follows:
a. Each group will establish a program of “Safe Passage” for all school age children throughout the community at all times regardless of what community of origin a youth may come from.
b. To work collectively to establish “Safe Zones” by declaring an end to gun violence and mob action that result in the loss of life and disabling injury to our most precious resource, our young people.
c. To establish a program of collaboration between street level organizations and the broader community to support community based economic development policies and programs designed to increase community control of resources such that the community is better able to direct economic resources to its young people and others to improve the quality of social life in the community.
d. Street Level organizations and their leadership will adopt a code of respect and protection of the school environment while promoting among its members, that at a minimum, they must complete their high school education.
3. –Increase youth employment and entrepreneurial opportunities (Poverty alleviation strategies)
The New L.I.F.E. Movement coalition and its broad base of coalition members have developed a poverty alleviation strategy designed to increase household income to families of BusyMan Power Teen Movement participants. The strategy ultimately seeks to provide small business opportunities and training to the household of BusyMan Power Teen Movement participants. The New L.I.F.E. Movement coalition members will provide micro-loans to initiate home based Direct sales and Direct service contract businesses offering a range of basic services and high demand basic merchandise at below market price. Also traditional job placement of youth on a part time basis with area businesses that have joined with the New L.I.F.E. Movement coalition’s business consortium. The business consortium members are a vital resource in the overall fight to eliminate violence and youth delinquency in our most troubled and disadvantaged communities these businesses provide direct financial support, contracting opportunities, and employment to BusyMan Power Teen Movement participates and their families.
The poverty alleviation track of the BusyMan Power Teen Movement is to serve as catalyst for bridging the disconnect between the school, the youth, and parents. The entrepreneurial, and job placement services are delivered in a school based setting and require parental engagement. As such, the intent is to provide an incentive to increase the frequency of parental contact with the school and faculty through their child’s involvement in BusyMan Power Teen Movement services and programs.
Parents more frequent inquiry into their child’s academic progress or lack thereof is an important element of early detection and intervention for kids struggling to achieve balance and satisfactory academic success.
It is the total village’s responsibility to ensure the academic success of its children, and the responsibility of society as a whole to support the local village or community in doing so. Our society and many local villages are failing miserably in this mission; to the deadly consequence of the hearth our youth, communities and society.
Poverty is the foundation of an infrastructure that supports rampant violence, broken families and juvenile delinquency. The walls of this infrastructure include the virtual takeover of community businesses by foreign merchants that exploit the community of its most vital and needed economic anemia that saps a community of its economic vitality creating a systematic transfer of indigenous worth out of its rightful hands into the hands of other communities and to their economic and social upliftment, and to our social and economic decline and misery.
Additionally and directly supportive of our community’s decline, and that supports the violence infrastructure is the weak, co-opted political representation from our elected officials that directly contributes to the steady and certain decline of our communities’ vitality.
Our elected officials are more wedded to the political agenda of the democratic political institution, to which they are aligned and supported by, than to the needs of the people that elect them to office.
The masses of people in every political district must be educated and organized to change this destructive paradigm, this is the political mandate of the moment. Our collective failure to respond to this current dysfunctional political paradigm will ensure the continuation of the destruction upon our children and communities. This current arrangement is a critical component of the violence infrastructure that is killing our children and destroying our communities and our posterity.
The final wall is organized religious practice serving the black community while most religious leaders and followers are well intentioned the basic religious instruction and theology practiced in black America remains that is based on Greco-Roman mythology. Religious ideas and stories that are pure superstition disguised as spirituality an essentially fear based doctrine that simply does not provide for its present form and practice does not provide for in its present form and practice the insight for appropriate discernment for resolution an effective arrangement of life’s many challenges and the spiritual inspiration to persevere to conquest.
As a community we must always demand of our political and religious servants that they provide intelligent and accurate instruction/guidance that leads the community to social advancement and greater economic prosperity and security. These are the outcomes that determine the social and economic health of community.
Our religious establishment must be the voice of the disadvantaged speaking truth to power about the impact of prevailing public policies on the social and economic health of our communities. They cannot be aligned with corrupt political powers and agendas nor can they be passive, disengaged and promoting irrelevant religious practices and beliefs. Our churches must become the leaders of social activism as it once was in bringing about the spiritual inspiration to bring into being that which we desire. This is what we need now from our religious leaders, not the curious alliances with corrupt powers, and the promotion of irrelevant theologies and religious practices.
Our young people especially our young men are in a desperate state of need. In growing number around urban black America is a direct assault on our young strong male stock that is alarming. And such alarm should awaken us collectively to the need to unite and respond sensibly to this challenge. If we fail, it will be to our collective demise. We can create safe communities but only when we come together as one not many. With one voice our political, religious and community leaders must challenge the continuing racism in many practices of government and unions at every level. So these constructs of the violence infrastructure must be dismantled in order that we reduce or eliminate violence among our youth.
4. –Expand youth exposure and involvement in positive cultural and recreational
activities as an alternative to idleness and just “Hanging Out” on the streets.
The BusyMan Power Teen Movement organizes structured cultural and recreational activities and social experiences that exposes youth to a broader world view and possibility for human achievement. Some of the activities include: Field trips, visits to area museums, concerts sporting events, etc. organized athletic programs and social clubs. Fill time with constructive activity.
Protocols for Implementation of school based BusyMan Power Teen Movement
1. Introduction of BusyMan Power Teen Movement to school officials.
The BusyMan Power Teen Movement operates as a violence reduction and juvenile delinquency prevention strategy; and as life skills, literacy, and character building instructional program. Operating as a community support to a school’s regular academic program.
BusyMan movement services are available to all students but we specifically seek out first the kids who are most at risk of dropping out for engagement in the BusyMan Power Teen Movement services. The BusyMan movement provides mental health services, entrepreneurial training, job placement, and cultural and recreational activities.
The program operates five days a week and can be incorporated during the regular academic hours, or as part of an afterschool program. For instructional and group psychological services purposes kids are worked with in small groups not to exceed twelve (12) persons.
Agreement to initiate the BusyMan Power Teen Movement
a. Agree on the date and time to meet with the first group of students to conduct the orientation meeting.
b. Conduct orientation meetings with students, the orientation meeting is where the BusyMan Power Teen Movement is explained to the students. It is here where students are informed about the programs intent to engage them as agents of change to eliminate violence and delinquency; to learn how to operate small family based businesses that will produce income for them and their families, to plan together a schedule of cultural and recreational activities that will serve as a basis for using leisure time more constructively.
c. Emphasis on the importance of graduation from high school and the critical need to take getting a good education very serious. Inform the students the BusyMan services are here to walk with them through the end of their high school experience to ensure their successful completion.
d. The students are always excited about opportunities to make money; most of the students are from families below the poverty line. So this part of the BusyMan program is of great interest to the students and their families. Engage them in this discussion and make clear to them the opportunity to learn these important life skills.
e. Provide an opportunity for the participants to ask questions. Provide clear answers to their questions.
Before adjournment of the orientation meeting advise the student of the following:
1. BusyMan services for the group will be provided two (2) days a week. The two (2) day schedule and times will be provided. The group will meet in sixty (60) minute sessions, twice a week.
2. Parental consent is required and parents must attend a parent orientation meeting.
3. BusyMan psychological services are paid for under Title 19 of the Medicaid program for youth whose families receive public assistance under the state’s temporary assistance to needy families (TANF) program. The entrepreneurial training, the cultural and the recreational program is paid for by the New L.I.F.E. Movement coalition and its members.
4. Registration of BusyMan participants. Each BusyMan participant must complete the registration and intake process. The following documents must be completed;
a. Parental Consent Form
b. Medical Authorization Form
c. Power Teen Registration Form
d. Assessment Questionnaire
Upon completion of the forms, a file is created and is submitted to the Site Director for review and approval. The Site Director’s review is to insure that the file is complete and that all forms as described above are completed in full, insuring that all spaces are filled in as required. After the Site Director’s approval of the files, they are then delivered to headquarters for filing.
The start of the BusyMan Group Therapy Sessions
Students are assigned to a group that meets twice a week. During the group discussions a wide range of topics are introduced that address directly the issues youth are face with or are experiencing currently. Issues such as the participants concern about their personal safety given the prevalence of violent episodes in their communities. Issues related to poverty and its impact is an important discussion for youth to have, in that it allows them to express their thoughts and feelings about important issues and challenges
