Our philosophy is that you need to be culturally flexible or elastic. You need to be able to change your behavior depending on the situation, especially as society becomes more global. In workshops, the scholars will role-play ethical dilemmas that highlighting good character traits and such ideas as talking things through rather than acting before knowing the facts. It's hard, because we're trying to change something they've lived with all their lives. Nowhere are consequences stressed more than in the program's health and sexuality courses, taught with parents' permission.
Courses cover aspects including abstinence, teen-age pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The agreement with parents also allows children to be transported to and from the summer program in Union Baptist vans for which the program has contracted. And families stay involved. We have workshops there, and it's really interesting for the parents as well as the students. It gives us a lot of insight on teen-agers. Me being a grandmother, I'm kind of out of this new area.