This program has been funded by the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities and the Forest Foundation.  Additional funding was provided by the Kansas City Chiefs and Children International and office space provided by El Centro.  It has provided summer employment designed to inspire pride and growth for youth in the area.  The program has been designed and directed by an ANDA volunteer, Paige O’Connor.

Photo of speaker, David von Drehle, Editor at Large for Time Magazine, addressing the
2010 Argentine Ambassadors

PROJECT NARRATIVE  

     Youth rise to meet challenges.  They thrive within set boundaries and stretch to reach attainable goals.  To do this they need competent guidance and empowerment through education.  Children want to prosper, but they need to hear adults tell them that they are capable.  Self empowered, busy, and goal orientated youth who take pride in themselves and their surroundings are less likely fall victim to tempting outside influences.  
 
      The Argentine is an impoverished, racially diverse, historically rich area of Kansas City, Kansas.  With little or no opportunity for summer jobs and no money for summer enrichment or camps, our students are increasingly vulnerable to crime and gang activity during the summer.  Our program, Argentine’s Ambassadors, is designed to provide creative and educational activities that increase self confidence and resilience in youth during at-risk hours. 

     Life skills, including financial responsibility and business etiquette, will be taught and applied, relationship building with adult community leaders will be encouraged, and, through the use of professionals, entrepreneurial training will culminate in a community showcase featuring student photography, creative writing, oral history transcription, painting and music development.   In addition, students will use their showcase to solicit extended community support and involvement in a student chosen, service learning project benefitting the Argentine community.
 
     Twenty students, ages 14 through 18, will be “hired” as employees of our program.  They will receive a weekly stipend, be held responsible for “job” specific requirements, and released from the program if not accountable.

Life Skills
 
     As students receive weekly stipends for their work in this program, professionals from the community will be brought in to teach them fiscal responsibility.  Use of financial planning, budgets, bank accounts and social responsibility will be the main focus.
 
     Students will be taught proper business etiquette.  Greetings, effective introductions, first impressions, the “handshake”, eye contact, and use of the formal letter and thank you notes will be taught and enforced.
 
 
Speakers Bureau
 
     To foster meaningful connections and relationships between youth and adults we will provide outside speakers who can be positive role models for our students.  Adult community leaders, business professionals, police, and neighbors will be presented once a week.
 
     Historical presentations and discussions on the Argentine community will be an important focus of our program.  Pride, knowledge of and ownership in one’s community are vital components to healthy community building.
 
 
The Written and Oral Word 
 
     Through oral history youth will learn valuable interview and transcription skills as they intimately, and without reserve, take vital personal histories of community members.  This interchange of life history is often colored with valuable, unscripted advice for today’s youth.
 
     Using age appropriate vocabulary and techniques, students will write poems generated from their unconscious minds.  Skill building in rhythm, sound, and imagery will be taught.  Editing and rewriting will be emphasized.
 
     Personal journals will be kept daily.  Published writing examples will be read, dissected and discussed.
 
     Lines of communication and a venue through which students both give and receive respect and genuine concern will be established when personal journals, poetry and oral histories are shared. Many students today join gangs to gain respect from peers and to receive a feeling of belonging. Here, as students find a venue to share within the Argentine Ambassadors, the need to replace a family structure that is missing for many students is reduced.
 
 
Photography
 
     Students will have the opportunity to photograph their “community” through the use of digital photography.  This project empowers participants, giving them license to explore, take ownership of, and then share with others, from a personal vantage point, their “community.”  Resulting photographs provide our extended community insight into Argentine through its youth’s eyes. The beautiful, the ugly, the good and the bad are all highlighted on film.
 
 
Painting
 
     In addition to providing a continuum of lifelong interest, art provides students a unique venue through which they can create a visual representation of personal thought and feeling. Painting is especially beneficial to individuals experiencing difficulties with the written or oral word.
 
 
Music
 
     Communities come together through participation in music performance and dance.  With help from Kansas City recording artist J. Q. Sirls, aka Wonkachild, students will write lyrics and then set them to music with the use of a professional studio. 
 
 
Service Learning Component
 
     Argentine Ambassador’s summer program will culminate in a service learning project designed to benefit the Argentine community.  This project, designed by the students, will affect a wide range of learning styles.  Students in service-learning projects usually have better retention.  Their attitudes change toward the people they’re working with, such as the homeless or the elderly.  And the projects build bridges between students and groups of people they wouldn’t often have contact.  Most importantly, it helps develop a sense of responsibility for and pride in their community.  They will study timeframe, budget, resources and benefit, work hard together to reach their goal, and share in reflection and celebration.