In the Schools

Youth Leadership Institute

The Youth Leadership Institute provides a range of youth education and peer leadership education programs for New Jersey high school and college students.

Lead for Diversity

Lead for Diversity, a peer leadership program for high school students throughout New Jersey, is the cornerstone of the Youth Leadership Institute. Participating schools will each send a delegation of up to five students, selected because of their interest, motivation, and leadership abilities, to one of three Lead for Diversity sessions held during the summer. Through carefully structured interactive workshops, small group discussions, and experiential learning, students will acquire peer leadership, conflict resolution, and human relations skills necessary for success in a diverse world. Annually, over two-hundred students representing more than forty high schools will attend one of the six-day residential Lead for Diversity sessions. Graduates will be prepared to utilize the skills they acquire as they enter the greater community, schools of higher education, and the workforce.

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Manytown

The Manytown Forum is a one-day human relations youth forum provided by the American Conference on Diversity Youth Leadership Institute. Manytown provides the opportunity for students from diverse ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to discuss relevant issues and identify strategies to improve inter-group relations in their schools and communities. The Manytown Forum is a no cost gathering held in six regional locations throughout New Jersey. Each forum is planned and facilitated by students who have been trained to lead a conversation about the selected Manytown topic. Students participating in Manytown have the opportunity to model leadership skills and participate in open, honest conversation. Participants will discuss strategies for increasing awareness and promoting diversity within their schools.

Youth and Community Summit

Youth and Community Summits are one-day forums for high school students and community leaders from local communities to learn about each other and to create positive social change within their community. The forums are planned and facilitated by Lead for Diversity graduates.

Break the Cycle Be the Change

The "Break the Cycle: Be the Change" program is a fast-paced, interactive performance which helps audience members to identify the sources of prejudice and the ways in which prejudice plays out in the schools and communities. Using role play, dramatic reading, and facilitated conversation, this program helps students identify ways that they can "be the change" in their schools around issues of prejudice, diversity, and understanding.

Awareness to Action

The Awareness to Action leadership program provides intensive human relations and bias reduction training for student leaders and educators from a single high school. Through an interactive, discussion based curriculum, Awareness to Action lays the groundwork for students of different backgrounds to step out of their comfort zones and begin to understand themselves and others in new and meaningful ways. The experience empowers student participants to use what they have learned in their personal lives as well as in their schools. As a result of attending Awareness to Action, participants will have an increased awareness of how attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and language can impact their relationships with others. At the conclusion of the training, Awareness to Action participants are taken through an Action Planning process that allows them to strategically plan to initiate positive change in their school community. A critical mass of Awareness to Action delegates and educators return to their school mobilized with the energy and skills necessary to improve inter-group relations.

Campus Leaders

The Campus Leaders Program brings together student leaders and a faculty advisor to increase their awareness of conscious and unconscious biases and prejudices that individuals may have towards those who are different and to role model the behaviors necessary to appreciate all that is different in our multicultural society. Program participants develop the skills necessary to foster an inclusive campus community and a just society -- both in the community and workplace. Team of students and faculty advisors form the basis for a campus leadership group that plans and facilitates approved human relations activities, programs or projects to benefit the campus community and individual participants.