For Immediate Release: Sept. 25, 2000 Contact: Sarah Grolnic-McClurg, 413-538-2030 [email protected]
33 YOUNG WOMEN TO CHANGE THEIR WORLDS:
From Police Brutality to Voter Turnout, 33 Action Projects Will Spring to Life Following the Mount Holyoke National Teen Summit take the lead! Oct. 12 -- 15
South Hadley, Mass.--Launching October 12, an innovative program, take the lead!, will empower 33 high school students from around the country to address social issues in their own communities. Selected through a highly competitive process, the young women will formulate action plans that tackle issues in their respective communities. From police brutality to voter turnout, the issues chosen by these teen leaders reflect a socially conscious generation and the diverse problems that concern today's teenagers.
While at Mount Holyoke College, a campus widely recognized for educating generations of women leaders, the promising high school students will sharpen their action projects and hone their leadership skills over the long weekend of October 12-15. Take the lead!, in its inaugural year, will be an annual program of the elite women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Paired with trained mentors drawn from the Mount Holyoke student body, the teens will keep in touch with their college-age mentors in the months following the national summit. While on campus, the mentors will support the teens as they create action plans for their community projects.
Issues already identified by the young women, who are juniors in high school, include: police brutality in New York City, advertising and female body image issues, racism, low voter turnout, student body apathy, homophobia, racial segregation in the New Orleans public school system, recycling on Maui, teenage sexuality, and (street) light pollution in the Rocky Mountains.
For more information, visit http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/ press/releases/lead.shtml.
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