Featured Programs
Youth Leadership Program with Sub-Saharan Africa
Learning the Value of Fresh Perspectives
Across two programs, sixty people – a mixture of students and instructors from Mali, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso – came to Berkeley, California, to participate in the Youth Leadership Program with Sub-Saharan Africa. The program was a collaboration between CC+S and Global Seed partnering with Ayusa International and sponsored by the United States Department of State. For the African participants, this program was the first time they had left their home countries – for the Y-PLAN staff and Global Seed, this was the first time the pedagogy was taught in French and adapted to African culture.
Over the course of three weeks, the students worked on behalf of Mayor of Berkeley, Tom Bates, to examine Telegraph Avenue, a popular street that runs to the east of the university and houses many students and businesses. Their question was: “How can the redevelopment of Telegraph Avenue create economic growth and make the City of Berkeley a great place for everyone to work, live, do business, and have fun?” Students were shocked and moved by the chronic homelessness they observed in the Bay Area, especially on Telegraph, reminding the staff and civic partners that its incidence is not normal or acceptable. In their final presentations, one group proposed that People’s Park, just east of Telegraph and home to many unhoused people, be transformed into a fruit orchard. It would be maintained by the formerly unhoused people who would live in shelters nearby and would be able to eat and sell the crop the trees produced. Through the Y-PLAN process, the students used the Bay Area as a classroom and learned that they had the capacity to investigate and solve civic issues. This program also strongly highlighted the reciprocal growth that can occur during cultural exchange programs.
