America’s Promise Alliance Dropout Prevention Summit Brings Together Caring Community Partners

(May 1, 2009) Building on the success of the groundbreaking 2008 Yonkers Partners in Education Summit that brought the community together on behalf of the City's students, the Yonkers Public Schools/Yonkers Partners in Education/America’s Promise Alliance Dropout Prevention Summit explored ways to keep students on the graduation track. More than 350 business executives, community members, educators, parents, students and elected officials focused on the five tenets of the America's Promise Alliance: Caring Adults, Safe Places, A Healthy Start, Effective Education and Opportunities to Help Others.

The video playing to the left is narrarated by Roosevelt High School students Zacharie, Sonia, Brandon, Luan, Sashay, Yarelis and Christina.

The Yonkers meeting, which drew participants from the school districts of Mt. Vernon, New Rochelle, Peekskill and Poughkeepsie was part of the larger initiative America's Promise Alliance, a group created by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. America’s Promise Alliance has become the nation’s largest multi-sector collaborative dedicated to the well-being of children .  This effective partnership alliance is committed to seeing that children experience the fundamental resources they need to succeed – these essential ingredients comprise the Five Promises: caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, an effective education and opportunities to help others.  Alliance partners are corporations, nonprofit service organizations, foundations, policymakers, advocacy organizations, and faith groups that work collaboratively to ensure that America’s young people receive the following Five Promises:

Promise One: Caring Adults
All children need support and guidance from caring adults in their families, at schools and in their communities. These include ongoing, secure relationships with parents as well as formal and informal relationships with teachers, mentors, coaches, youth volunteers and neighbors.

Caring adults are the cornerstone of a child’s development. Parents come first, but children also need to experience the support from caring adults in all areas of their lives.

Promise Two: Safe Places
All children need to be physically and emotionally safe wherever they are —at home, in school, around the neighborhoods and in the virtual world of the media. They also need a healthy balance between structured, supervised activities and unstructured time. It’s important for children to be safe, but safe places alone are not enough. It is equally important for children’s development that these places engage them actively and constructively.

Promise Three: A Healthy Start
All children need and deserve healthy bodies, minds and habits. These result from regular health check-ups and needed treatment, good nutrition and exercise, healthy skills and knowledge, and good role models of physical and psychological health. With increased attention on such issues as upsurges in childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, Americans have a raised awareness of the importance of a healthy start as a critical developmental resource in a child’s life. Nevertheless, we are falling far short of keeping this Promise. Nine million young people today remain without health insurance, and one in 11 high school students reports attempting suicide.

Promise Four: Effective Education
Children need the intellectual development, motivation and skills that equip them for successful work and lifelong learning. These result from having quality learning environments, challenging expectations and consistent guidance and mentoring.

The number-one predictor of whether you will be successful in life is whether you graduate from high school. In today’s competitive global economy, effective education is more important than ever before. Yet more than 25% of the country’s students do not finish high school. The figure is nearly twice as high for African American and Latino students.

Promise Five: Opportunities to Help Others
All children need the chance to make a difference in their families, at schools and in their communities. Knowing how to make a difference comes from having models of caring behavior, awareness of the needs of others, a sense of personal responsibility to contribute to the larger society, and opportunities for volunteering, leadership and service.

Providing young people with opportunities to make a difference through service instills not only a sense of responsibility but of possibility. Young people want to be involved in making the world a better place.