Youth

Valerie Hill, the director of community services at the Southwest Community Center at 401 South Ave., says that for her, summer programming doesn’t end when the leaves take on their bright autumn hues. “As soon as summer camp ends, I start working on summer camp,” Hill said.

Students start with sewing basics and then go on to create projects such as pillows, handbags Say Yes to Education recently started offering sewing classes to elementary school students on the South Side. Staffed by instructors from Peterson Sewing School, 920 Euclid Ave., the classes are for students at Elmwood Elementary and Roberts School. Students can enroll in a free, …

Kristian Tull won the Syracuse Peace Council’s Poetry Competition for her poem about peace When Kristian Tull found out she had won the Syracuse Peace Council’s Poetry Competition, she couldn’t contain her excitement. “I screamed. I jumped up and down,” the Corcoran High School junior remembers.

Students from the Creative Arts Academy paint the ‘one way to live’ Six adolescents, all student artists at the Community Folk Art Center, at 805 E. Genesee St., circled around Adrianna Cummings, a sophomore at Corcoran High School. As they watched, Cummings pooled bright red paint onto the word “violence” inscribed on a section of what will be a 120-square-foot …

Actress Tasha Smith, from Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married?” films, spoke to a room of approximately 100 Syracuse area high school girls of color about her troubled upbringing and path to Hollywood success at the Schine Student Center at Syracuse University on Saturday, March 26.

Africa Bound plans to take children to Ghana to learn about their African heritage Syracuse Africa Bound, an organization designed to educate children about their African heritage, will be taking three local children to Ghana in West Africa this summer. Over the next few months, the organization will hold a series of fundraising events to raise money for travel expenses …

On Point for College helps students overcome barriers to gaining college education When Ginny Donohue responded to her daughter Shanley’s request to help a friend get into college, she could not have predicted that one good deed could affect thousands of young lives — and also cause her to change careers. Donohue, a chief financial officer for a local electronics …

Girls Inc. held a girls-only ’80s-themed dance party to give females a space to let loose, exercise and have fun Cyndi Lauper blasted on the speakers, while a group of six teenage girls danced together in a small semi-circle in a strobe-lit auditorium at YWCA’s Girls Inc., located at 401 Douglas St., on Thursday night, March 10. Girls Inc., a …

Story by Megan Ripley, a senior at Corcoran High School Two Corcoran High School seniors describe what they love about their education and why they believe students should put hard work first

One day recently, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was about four feet tall. At least, that’s how tall the 7- and 8-year-olds were who represented him as part of an Interactive Black History Museum project at the Dunbar Center. Maya Angelou, Jackie Robinson, and Harriet Tubman were also in the crowd.