THE SCHOLARS OF PEACE

TGOW-I began service as a “Resource Specialist” for Nollie Jenkins Family Center during summer 2012. This relationship evolved from a series of meetings with middle & high school students who had completed Nollie Jenkins Family Center’s (NJFC) Youth Leadership & Organizing Training. They had become new members of the Center’s intergeneration roundtable and were engaged in research and planning related to a Promise Neighborhood grant initiative. 

The students in this group all agreed to engage in participatory action research that documented observable indices of violence in their community and schools. While the documentation collected by NJFC Youth Organizers was data that would drive their decision-making process for grant initiatives, it ultimately served to lay the foundation for planning a new afterschool program to address rising levels of violence throughout Holmes County.

The students agreed to name their program “Return of the Scholars of Peace” in recognition of the new knowledge they had acquired about the history of Timbuktu and the role that scholars played in resolving conflicts in the West African empires of Mali & Songhay. NJFC’s focus has been on developing youth organizers as strategic learners and peer mediators who harbor a commitment to engage in service-learning for social change. 

TGOW-I continues to promote the respective options related to the Scholars of Peace Program. Feel free to CONTACT US if you have an interest in learning more or adding any of these dynamic features to your work with youth in extra-curriculum community-based projects.