THE NATIONAL YOUTH SUMMIT

Look at what past donations have helped happen.  We are particularly grateful to the Clark|Fox Family Foundation for their continued support.

History:  As an extension of five youth gang summits held locally in the St. Louis region, The Ethics Project, in partnership with the University of Missouri St. Louis (UMSL) and the St. Louis Public Schools, launched its first National Youth Summit on Justice, Education and the US Economy: Confronting Challenges of 21st Century Youth, in April 2015. The two-day summit was held at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri St. Louis.  Deemed a “life-changing” event, the summit was designed to bring together talented and intellectually gifted student leaders from cities across the United States to work with leading civic leaders, academics, and economists to examine the school to prison pipeline, create a model of discipline based on inherent strengths and develop innovative economic strategies not dependent upon the current system of mass incarceration.  Students are challenged to pursue a resurgence of academic excellence, highly engaged educators and exceptional expectations for themselves and those that serve them.

The second summit was held in January 2016, at The John F. Kennedy Center Howard University in Washington, DC. The work continued November 13th and 14th, 2017 at Morehouse College in partnership with The King Collection in the civil rights capital of America, Atlanta, GA. The opening ceremony and Passing the Torch Ceremony was held on November 12th, 2017, at Historic Ebenezer Church. The 2018 summit returned to its roots at the University of Missouri.

With a name change to The National Youth Summit on Education, Justice, and Leadership, the summits have since been held at the University of Missouri St. Louis (2018) an Jackson State University, the Two Mississippi Museums, The Smith Robertson Museum, The Mississippi Museum of Arts and Medgar Evers Home Museum. (2019) Plans to hold the summit at Alabama State University in Montgomery, AL in 2020 and again in 2021 were derailed due to the pandemic.

Invited Participants

  • High school student leaders as well as college freshmen from cities throughout the US. We continue to welcome students from the US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs’ National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention as well as youth from national boys and girls.
  • Workshop Facilitators – local and national experts
  • Keynote Speaker
  • Plenary speakers
  • Chaperones
  • Local church hosts
  • Guides

*Schools and organizations are asked to select students based on intellectual capacity and leadership skills regardless of academic performance or disciplinary record. School districts within communities with high rates of incarceration or prison populations will be allocated additional seats. A chaperone is required for all participants under the age of 18. There should be one chaperone for one to every ten students.

DONATE

Your donation to the National Youth Summit helps us present national educators and experts on education, justice, and economics to guide and motivate high school student leaders and educators to reshape their approach to excellence in education and safety in schools and communities and move toward eradicating the schools to prison pipeline.




NOMINATE A STUDENT: 

We encourage you to nominate a student in their sophomore, junior or senior year who attends a public, private, parochial or charter high school to participate in this year’s extraordinary summit.  The recommendation will be forwarded to their high school principal.

PRESENTED BY: 

  • The Ethics Project

SPONSORED BY:

    SUPPORTERS AND ADVISERS

    The National Youth Summit has been shaped by the support and advice of the following:

    • Senator Claire McCaskill, US Senator from Missouri
    • Tod Martin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of Senator Claire McCaskill
    • Francis G. Slay, Mayor, City of St. Louis
    • Charlie Dooley, Former St. Louis County Executive
    • Ambassador Andrew Young, Chair, Andrew J. Young Foundation
    • Frankie Freeman, Esq., Former Commissioner, US Commission on Civil Rights
    • Daniel Isom, Ph.D, Former Dir, Mo Dept. of Public Safety, Endowed Professor of Criminology, Former Chief of Police of the City of St. Louis
    • Sam Dotson, Former Chief, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept.
    • Chief, Jon Belmar, Chief, St. Louis County Police Dept.
    • Kelvin Adams, Superintendent, St. Louis Public Schools
    • Judge James Dowd, Former Chief Judge, Mo Court of Appeals
    • Judge Jimmie Edwards, Former Presiding Judge Juvenile Court, Founder, Innovative Concept Academy & Nat’l Judge of the Year
    • Judge David Mason, Presiding Judge, St. Louis City Juvenile Court
    • C. Jessel Strong, Immediate Past-President, St. Louis Clergy Coalition
    • Michael Jones, Pastor, Friendly Temple
    • Dr. Freddy J. Clark, Pastor, Shalom Church
    • Rodney Francis, Pastor, Washington Tabernacle Church & Executive Dir., Youth & Family Center
    • Donald Suggs, Publisher, and Executive Editor, St. Louis American Newspaper
    • Maxine Clark, Founder, Build-a-Bear Workshop & CEO, Clark-Fox Family Foundation
    • Lynne Jackson, Great great granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott and Founder, President, Dred & Harriett Scott Foundation
    • Joseph Anderson, Immediate Past-President, 100 Black Men of St. Louis
    • Flint Fowler, President, Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club
    • Adrian Bracy, President, St. Louis Metropolitan YWCA
    • Stefan Bradley,  PhD., Director of African American Studies, St.  Louis University
    • Tony Neal, Founder and CEO, Educational Equity Consultants
    • Halbert Sullivan, CEO, Father Support Center
    • Adolphus Pruitt, President, NAACP, St. Louis Branch
    • McCarthy Building Group
    • Incarnate Word Foundation
    • Boniface Foundation
    • Chief Justice Paul Reiber
    LOCALE
    • 2015 – The Touhill, Campus of The University of Missouri St. Louis
    • 2016 – The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Terrace Theater
    • 2016 – Howard University
    • 2017 – Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA
    • 2018 – University of Missouri St. Louis
    • 2019 – Jackson State University, Two Mississippi Museums, Smith Robertson Museum, Medgar Evers Home Museum, Mississippi Museum of Arts
    • 2020 – Alabama State University

      • By engaging youth of diverse backgrounds from cities across the United States, The Summit provides an unprecedented opportunity to support the progress of White House initiatives and to heighten awareness of the problems faced by youth of color. With these young men and women being our next generation of leaders, the Summit will specifically explore strategies to:

      • Increase high school graduation rates
      • Lower unemployment rates
      • Broaden academic visions
      • Improve economic mobility and opportunities
      • Improve school discipline
      • Decrease crime and over-incarceration
      • Increase education achievement
      • Decrease human and socio-economic costs
      • Increase STEMM awareness & opportunities
      • Develop tools for increased communication
      • Diminish racial barriers
      • Unify law enforcement and the community
      FACILITATORS/SPEAKERS

      The following is a partial list of past and present speakers and workshop facilitators

      EDUCATION

      • Dr. Ivory Toldson, Ph.D.,   Assoc. Professor of Counseling Psychology,  Howard University and Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
      • Maxine Clark, Founder and former CEO, Build-a-Bear Corporation
      • Tony Neal, President, and CEO of Educational Equity Consultants
      • Halbert Sullivan, Founder & CEO, Father Support Center
      • Dr. Michael Railey, Assoc. Dean, Multicultural Affairs, St. Louis University School of Medicine

      SOCIAL JUSTICE

      • Judge Jimmie Edwards, former Presiding Judge, St. Louis City Juvenile Court, National Judge of the Year, Founder Innovative Concept Academy
      • Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian, Civil and voting rights leader
      • James Dowd, former Chief Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals
      • Kymberly Smith Jackson, former US Prosecuting Attorney, Principal, Phoenix Law Firm, Washington, DC
      • Terrence Roberts, Ph.D., one of The Little Rock Nine & Founder of The Little Rock Nine Foundation
      • The Hon. Michael Wolf, former Chief Judge, Mo Supreme Court, Dean, St. Louis University School of Law
      • Theron Pride, Sr. Advisor, Office of Justice Programs, US Dept. of Justice
      • Adjoa Aiyetoro, JD, Assoc. Professor of Law, Director, Racial Disparities in the Arkansas Criminal Justice System Research Project University of Arkansas, Little Rock, School of Law
      • Roger Goldman, JD, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law and author, St. Louis University School  of Law

      US ECONOMY

      • Richard Rosenfeld, Ph.D, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri St. Louis and author of Economics and Youth Violence: Crime, Disadvantage, and Community
      • Amb. Andrew Young, former US Ambassador, Atlanta Mayor and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
      • Ben O’Dell,  Assoc. Director, Ctr. for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships, US Dept. of  Health & Human Services
      • Jade Harrell, Producer, Radio Host, and Businesswoman, Clear Channel Broadcasting
      • Jaylen Bledsoe,  17 yr old CEO and President of The Jaylen D. Bledsoe Global Group technology company
      • b. Marcell Williams, Founder of Jewels Inc. and b. Marcell Youth Ministries
      • Reginald Dickson, Retired CEO, Inroads, principal investor and Fortune 500 Board member
      • Koran Bolden, National Youth Motivational Speaker & CEO of Street Dreamz Recording Studio
      • And more –  see The Presenters

      * Due to the demands of these outstanding speakers, their availability may change. We thank each of them for donating their time to this important work.

      WORKSHOP TOPICS

      EDUCATION

      • Discipline through engagement
      • Teaching from a business perspective
      • Returning educators to education
      • Undoing the school to prison pipeline
      • Leadership in a college environment
      • Shaping the picture of an educated America
      • The Role of Faith-Based Communities
      • Thinking outside the box to curb violence in schools
      • Reducing prisons to reduce violence
      • Flipping the channels from violence to victories
      • Financial literacy from birth
      • Creating safe homes to create safe schools
      • Learning to Leverage Relationships
      • Social media for social change
      • Using STEMM to stem violence
      • Prisons to prep schools

      SOCIAL JUSTICE

      • The hard truth – When justice means Just US
      • Who’s running this anyway
      • Youth Violence, Facing the Challenges for Youth
      • Recapturing world leadership through ethics and justice
      • Undoing the pipelines to prison
      • The hard truth – When justice means Just US
      • Electing leaders who lead
      • Drug Courts and other alternatives
      • Toward a less punitive society
      • The problem with privilege
      • Capping pipelines to prison
      • When communities thrive at the cost of others’ lives
      • Strategies for justice
      • Reshaping the conversation on crime and punishment
      • Shaping the picture of a just and humane society
      • Family Matters

      ECONOMICS

      • The economics of mass- incarcerations (when crime pays)
      • Understanding income equality
      • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
      • Public health, public wealth
      • The financial cost of human suffering
      • Shaping a new economy
      • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
      • Returning to apprenticeships
        • Resources for reentry
        • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
        • Why the rich get richer
        • Beyond the minimum wage
        • The Economics of Youth Violence
        • Earning gaps and other inequities
        • Creating income equality
        • Generating growth in economically suppressed communities

      CONTACT US

      Phone:
      +1 (314) 495-9528

      Email:
      [email protected]

      Mailing address:
      The Ethics Project 40 N. Kingshighway
      12F St. Louis, MO 63108




      Your donation to the National Youth Summit helps us present national educators and experts on education, justice, and economics to guide and motivate high school student leaders and educators to reshape their approach to excellence in education and safety in schools and communities and move toward eradicating the schools to prison pipeline.

      DONATE

      Your donation to the National Youth Summit helps us present national educators and experts on education, justice, and economics to guide and motivate high school student leaders and educators to reshape their approach to excellence in education and safety in schools and communities and move toward eradicating the schools to prison pipeline.

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