The outdoors is both an exciting and joy-filled way to provide young men a way to both think and live outside the box. This summer for the fourth year in a row The Blue Heart Foundation partnered with Outdoor Outreach engaging in opportunities ranging from surfing and kayaking as well ensuring showed love for our planet by providing environmental stewardship at every opportunity.
The beauty in watching how these events positively impact our young men is a sight to behold. Darius was deathly afraid of water, as you watch his video testimony you will see with encouragement and trust he he took a chance… As a result the entire experience was life changing.
In addition we headed to where the sand and surf awaited, its amazing how each young man were so excited that they wanted to attack the water… but first comes the safety and surf lesson and once complete each took to the water as if it was a natural experience. The power of the outdoors is indescribable. The life skills, larger perspective and appreciation of our natural surroundings cannot be replicated anywhere else.
Finally and probably the most important contributions we get to make is the care and restoration of mother earth. There is perhaps no better feeling than to know ones actions are bettering the world for years to come. Whether it’s planting trees, picking up litter or relocating invasive plant life the we are honored to do our part to make the world a better place.
These experiences not only provide new perspectives and learning but deep memories and irreplaceable bonds which have lifelong affects. For many children, it is a strong reality that they will not have these formative outdoor experiences, because they do not have the opportunities provided for them.
Which is an important reason why The Blue Heart Foundation partners with Outdoor Outreach to fulfill their mission by engaging teens with outdoor adventures to instill positive memories and bonds with nature and mentors. As both organizations work to inspire all youth to see possibility and opportunity in their lives, we realize that through these positive types of events you began to see attitude and behavioral changes which help them become successful adults.
We had the opportunity to volunteer and perform at the Annual Cooper’s Family Juneteenth Fesitval.
For the past 50 years, the Cooper Family Juneteenth has been a unique event in San Diego. It’s history traces back to a man named Sidney Cooper Sr. who owned and ran the Twilight Barber Shop and the Cooper & Sons’ Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Produce Store on 2973 Imperial Avenue, along with his wife
Thelma who ran the adjacent Powder Puff Beauty Salon. A very proud Black man, Sidney strongly believed in the importance of supporting Black-owned businesses, giving back to the community, fostering entrepreneurship, and getting an education . Known as “the Mayor of Imperial Avenue” because of his heavy involvement in and love for his community, the hosting of Juneteenth was just one of the many ways Sydney gave back to the neighborhood he cared for so much.
The Cooper family continues to expand on the long established relationships built over many years to both preserve the heritage of this historically Black neighborhood, and be inclusive of the growing multicultural aspects of this now racially diverse
California Western School of Law held the 4th annual Prepare to A.I.M. for Law Youth Conference June 2, at the Moot Court Room, 350 Cedar Street in San Diego.
A.I.M. for Law, which stands for “Achieve. Inspire. Motivate,” is an outreach program that prepares high school and undergraduate students, primarily from underrepresented communities, for the law school application process and the first year of law school.
During the one-day conference, that was themed #Dare2See, students engaged in interactive activities that address a successful transition to and through college, with an eye toward law school, as well as key tools needed to get into law school. They spoke to current law students, practicing attorneys/judges, law faculty, and staff, and got a taste of the first year of law school by performing an oral argument before judges.
“The youth conference responds to a growing gap in education particularly for young people from underrepresented groups,” said A.I.M. Program Director Professor Leslie Culver. “That is, an ability to envision an educational/career path beyond high school. In particular, the legal field suffers from a lack of diversity, as many students – primarily racial students – do not see lawyers that look like them, so for many, it is not a desirable or thought of career choice.”
The successful June conference had 22 attendees and ran from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“Often waiting until college to introduce a legal career to students can be too late if students have not been academically successful in college,” added Professor Culver. “Turning grades around midway through one’s college career can be extremely difficult, thus making it more difficult to have law school options.”
For more information on the A.I.M. for Law Program visit: https://www.cwsl.edu/student-life/campus-resources/diversity-services/aim-for-law
Blue Heart had the opportunity to attend the San Diego Association of African-American Educators (AAAE) Youth Conference on the University of San Diego campus learning about professionalism, code switching, priority career sectors such as science, technology, and engineering, plus the history of HBCUs and prominent African-American educators from the past who still influence education today.
STEAM Education encourages young natural scientists and promoted critical thinking. By actively engaging in learning about their surroundings. It has been shown Active learning leads to increases in examination performance that can raise average grades within the STEM fields by a half a letter. Educators encouraged this type of engagement to remain critical thinkers and interested in the sciences. On this day there was a Q & A with our students touching on opportunities in education as well as STEM based careers.
Painful as some of these experiences were, I was grateful to have them in middle school and high school, so that when the time came to head for college, I already had some fluency navigating between different cultures (to make life even more interesting, I had a small crew of Latino friends from my hometown who I also spent time with in college, enjoying getting to know another group who were so much like young, African-Americans in some ways and so different in others).
I watched as too many others from my hometown and other predominantly black cities struggled in a university setting where suddenly they really were a minority.
For these kids, being members of a minority group was an abstraction, because everywhere they turned in their own lives — from school to the corner store and their own street corners — they were surrounded by others who looked and acted like them. (I used to tell my private-school classmates that, before I joined their world, the only time I saw white people outside of a department store or gas station was when they got lost driving through my neighborhood.)
But once these students left those mostly black neighborhoods for top colleges such as Indiana University, Purdue University or Notre Dame, they were suddenly surrounded by a culture they hadn’t experienced firsthand. On top of the normal pressures of leaving home and family to take on a ramped-up academic challenge, they had to learn how to navigate white social structures while retaining their own sense of what it meant to be black.
I learned early on, thanks to that g-word nonsense, that expertly navigating another culture wasn’t a rejection of where I’d come from or a signal that I was any less authentically black. And returning to my roots wasn’t being phony or perpetrating a put-on.
It was being fully who I am. This is a lesson too many other young people from too many other cultures have to learn the hard way — making their way in an American culture that too often still demands assimilation or marginalization.
As more cultures join America’s melting pot, that’s why code-switching remains so valuable.
The Blue Heart Foundation’s Workshop theme this months had two focuses:
1) Preparing for an Interview and 2) Careers in Government and Intern Opportunities.
We want to the Em Jackson from @c2csd for her very insightful and informational presentation which included role playing.
We also want to thank Mathew Arthur Gordon@mat2fresh and Stephanie Allen for spending their Saturday Morning educating and investing in our youth.
As High School students work towards independence and adulthood, they’ve come to understand that young people need to take several important steps: – Choose the right learning path; – Focus on educational opportunities; – Keep abreast of the rapidly changing world as it affects their life and career. The Blue Heart Foundation believes that preparation for all three are critical towards instilling confidence as they enter the workforce as well as assists in making the right decisions.
Rehearsing job interviews results in better actual interviews. Practice cannot make perfect, but it is guaranteed to make better. The more interviews you do, the more adept you are at doing them. Go to your first interview with the poise that comes with having done five or six interviews by engaging a friend to becoming an interviewer to your applicant and stage a rehearsal
