Tuesday
An education fair was held in the new Education wing of YouthLink. North Hennepin Community College, Hennepin Technical College, MCTC, Minneapolis Public Schools, and Youthrive joined us to provide youth with information about college, finishing high school, and joining in extracurricular activities. When youth finished learning and getting information from our exhibitors, they were able to receive a backpack full of back-school supplies. Many youth were really excited to start off the academic year stocked and ready to go!

Wednesday
Wednesday was our flagship event of Back-to-School week. Life Transitions had applied for a grant through the Minneapolis Public Schools’ HYPE Council and we were funded to bring in one of the original Freedom Writers. The Freedom Writers were a classroom full of high school students in Long Beach, CA that came together through the help of their teacher. They used writing as a tool to express themselves through daily diaries and accomplished some amazing things throughout high school (check out http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org for more info). We brought in the Freedom Writer Darrius Garrett and his assistant Narada Comans to speak at the Downtown FAIR School (https://sites.google.com/a/wmep.k12.mn.us/wmep-k12-mn-us-fair-dt/).

Darrius spoke to our YouthLink community about his childhood, being homeless, getting out of the gang he was involved in, and connecting with school. Darrius showed the ABC news report that had covered his classroom’s story. The presentation was inspirational, his story mirrored what a lot of our youth have been through. One youth came up to me afterwards and said, “Man, my story is exactly like Darrius’, I got kicked out of my house, had nowhere to stay. I’m trying to change my life, like he did.” Darrius’ was really social and spoke with the youth afterwards one on one. He seemed excited to interact even more with our youth at the open mic the next night.

Thursday
Open mic night. Darrius came and emceed our YouthLink open mic. Now, YouthLink’s open mics are normally special, but something about this night was extra special. Youth came up and performed personal poems, raps, and songs. A highlight was a dance “battle” between two of our youth. It was the first time many youth had performed at our open mic and we had around 20 youth sign up to participate! It was one of the best open mics witnessed at YouthLink. Darrius left directly from the open mic to his flight, that’s dedication!