The Summer Academic and Cultural Enrichment Program (SACE), started in 2024, is a nine week program giving young boys, ages 15 to 20 years old, the opportunity to learn about their history and expand their view of their future with career and education exploration. Sponsored by the United Way of Southeast Louisiana, the program embeds the participants in the community, exposing them to all the resources available to them within the beauty of their own city. The program is a summer program exposing our young people to new experiences both in the city and outside of it. Whether it’s recreational activities, everyday life skills, or possible career pathways it’s important that they are given opportunities to make informed choices in the future by establishing there are many roads to success and achievement.
Now in its second year, we sat down to learn more about the growth by speaking with the program team and the participants about their experience. Jalana Farlough, Director of the SACE program, expressed “[her] hope was that each participant was able to take something away from the program, or be inspired to do something, with a plan.” This hope is foundational for the program which originated with our Executive Director, Mr. Ernest Johnson, and brought to life by an amazing program development team meeting weekly to construct the curriculum.
In nine weeks, the participants are immersed into the opportunities available in the city. From learning how to garden with Grow Dat Youth Farm and working with the Trombone Shorty Foundation (TSF), the goal is to learn or engage in activity that sparks curiosity, love of community, and a sense of confidence that whatever interests you is possible to pursue. Speaking to the boys, each of them had an activity come to mind that they cherished. One mentioned learning beats and hi-hats at TSF because he is an aspiring artist and it helped him learn more about his craft. Another was inspired by their visit to Idea Village where they learned about the mentorship programs they have for entrepreneurs at any stage, because it was the first time he heard “that you [could] get help building a business from the ground up.” Many of them also enjoyed their time with The Butterfly Effect, which taught them meditation and how to express their emotions while remaining calm. For many they saw these tools as methods they can use in everyday life to regulate their emotions. And this is exactly the goal of the SACE, to open our young people’s minds to the plethora of opportunities in front of them with the tools to sustain their passions.
But it necessary to not only instill a confidence in themselves, but a pride in their city within the programming. Many of our boys haven’t gone much farther than their own ward, so the chance to take them to Audubon Park or the mall was just as exciting because many had never been. They also got exposure to local universities like Loyola and Xavier, showing the possible pathways of their future that can happen in their own backyards. And more so, establishing that there are students and teachers that they can relate to, coming from the same communities, with many of the same obstacles and reservations.
The annual road trip through the south concludes the summer program visiting historical black landmarks in both Montgomery and Atlanta. Our first stop was the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. This museum takes you on a chronological path through history illustrating the fight Black Americans faced in the past and how it shapes our fight against inequalities today. Farlough expressed in the days after, “feeling empowered and …[filled with] this sense of pride” reflecting on the forward progress we have made as a community despite the systemic obstacles we face.
We continued our journey to Atlanta, meeting with the owners of Reign, a multi-million dollar black owned business owned by New Orleans native Demond Cromp. Cromp underlined the mission of this company was to facilitate a need, selling high quality sanitary napkins at affordable prices while also sharing the contributing factors to his success. His presentation was invaluable not only because of his success but because like all of our students, he is a New Orleans native, understanding the landscape in which each one of them are growing up in and the mindset it takes to push beyond the boxes people try to put them in.
Beyond academic or cultural growth, the staff and the participant’s families have been able to witness the personal growth in each of the boys. Tallulah Chavira, Ubuntu’s Program Designer, when asked about an impactful memory in her experience she recalls a moment with one of the boys that stuck with her. “We were assessing his strengths… and he didn’t know if he had any” which broke her heart to hear. It is an assessment that all the participants do at the beginning of the program to track their growth and interests while also helping our staff to further tailor the programming to their needs. But luckily as the program went on she witnessed a shift in his confidence in real time, and was optimistic that he left the program with a different answer than when he began. And Farlough echoed a similar experience reflecting on the joy she felt seeing the boys “go off … to form this brotherhood, knowing they have friends within each other.” Farlough even noted seeing a similar shift in the parents too. At the end of the nine weeks, parents who were initially concerned seemed to have weight lifted off their shoulders by the end of the experience observing a new found passion and motivation in their boys to take on their future.
