YMCA program helps multicultural youth set high educational goals
The ethnic make-up of our high schools is changing: By 2013, non-white racial/ethnic groups will constitute 21 percent of Minnesota’s high school graduates — a 52 percent increase in minority students and a 19 percent decrease in white students compared with 2003 levels. This statistic is creating some momentum in Minnesota to prepare greater numbers of minority students for college.
One YMCA project is making strides. The Multicultural Achievers Programs of Minneapolis are currently operating after-school enrichment programs in high schools and middle schools in 15 districts in Minneapolis and its suburbs that served 350 students last year. “Our program goal is to help youth set high educational and career goals,” said Athelgra Williams, who directs the program out of the North Community YMCA. And the results are impressive: 90 percent are applying and going to college.
A typical Achiever group has about 25 students and meets weekly or bi-weekly with Y staff members. Initially, activities focus on team building to create cohesion within the group, and then teens start to set their own goals. With the help of field trips and speakers, students learn about the possibilities for college and careers and how education can help them achieve their goals. “The program motivates students to succeed in school and gain marketable skills,” said Williams.
One aim of the Achiever program is to bring the business world to life for students. “We invited a Cub pharmacist to talk to a group and it gave them a ‘behind the scenes’ look at what she did, how much money she made and what path she took to deciding on a career,” Williams said. “It’s also a way for Black and Hispanic professionals and their companies to get involved in their community.”
Achiever groups also learn about the college process and visit different campuses — public and private — to find out about the range of choices. “Our member private schools have a long history of supporting youth development through partnerships with the YMCA,” said Phillip Miner, director of the community initiative for the Minnesota Private College Council and chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Black Achievers Program. “No other YMCA program works as intentionally as this one to offer hope, high expectations, career and college advice to this very vulnerable population of today’s youth.”
Hamline University is a long-time supporter of the Black Achievers Program and other private colleges have sponsored activities as well. Achiever groups have attended homecoming at Saint John’s University and the Building Bridges Conference held each year in March at Gustavus Adolphus College to promote change through the awareness of diversity.
“Colleges need to work with groups like this,” according to Virgil Jones, director of multicultural programs at Gustavus. “We have a responsibility to make access a reality for all kids and the Achiever programs help us do this.” The biggest impact, he said, is that students see the process of getting into college and can imagine themselves on a particular campus.
Williams recalls how 55 Achievers showed up on a recent Saturday to visit a metro-area campus. “One student told me afterward that ‘I never, ever thought of this school as an option; now I see this as possible.’ That’s the power of this program,” she said.
Multicultural Achievers Programs at the Minneapolis and St. Paul YMCAs are among approximately 180 programs across the country. Miner is now working with a newly funded Collegiate Achievers initiative at the University YMCA that targets youth in Minneapolis and is helping the St Paul Multicultural Achievers program expand services in two St. Paul high schools. “These programs inspire and prepare youth of color to obtain high school and college degrees," he said, "and our schools are committed to supporting them.”
For more information, view the YMCA National Black Achievers Program brochure 
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