Youth Organization Helping Shape Chicago Communities One Family at a Time

Youth for Positive Change is an organization started by Dr. Diane Simpson. Her efforts and determination to change the culture and environment that we raise our children in has slowly but surely brought a new way of thinking amongst the participants in her program. Her aim to develop mentors for students has brought a group of people that includes community leaders, parents, children, and entertainers together for a fundraiser to help raise awareness to her cause. We sat down with Dr. Simpson for a chat about her goals for the organization.

 

Jarrod Horton

Staff Writer

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Black Truth News: Can You Tell the People who you are, and what you got going on for the community?

 

Dr. Diane Simpson:  Well my name is Diane Simpson; I am president and founder of youth for positive change. It’s an organization that understands that the youth not only needs a mentor but they need a community of mentors. What we mean by that is that it takes more than what the children are learning in school and at home to educate our children. What we do is development, mentoring in schools, we partner with the parents, and partnering with the youth. We gather together with them and we help them develop their goals, aspirations and teach them about development stages. There are five development stage areas that we are concern with, one is academics, the intellectual stage; we work with emotional and social growth, physical and health, practical life skills, and also spiritual growth. We understand all of that make a person whole.

So what we try to do is teach the parents, youth and the community about their needs in those areas; and how to set their goals and objectives in those areas. Then we help monitor them throughout that process, as I stated, everything is in stages; we understand time change, people change, situation changes, so were not advocating for long term mentoring. We want to leave behind the mentoring concepts in our schools; so we can learn to mentor each other on a consistent basis.  

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