WHAT: A WHOLE DAY OF YOUTH-FOCUSED WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTATIONS,

WITH LOTS OF FOOD AND FUN INCLUDED!

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: JAYSON WILLIAMS, FORMER NBA PLAYER

WHEN: SATURDAY, SEPT 8TH, 2012

WHERE: BERKSHIRE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

TIME: 8:30 AM TO 4:30 PM

TRANSPORTATION ARRANGEMENTS: Bus Pick-up 8 AM @ Palace Park, North St. Pittsfield, Return 4:45 PM from BCC to Palace Park.

See the details for the Youth Summit Night Time Show! BerkshireYouthSummitNiteShow

Some background information on the Youth Summit

In the days after last May’s 3^rd Thursday event and the very public arrests that followed it, a new, grassroots community organization began meeting in hopes of developing strategies to empower our youth, facilitate communication between adolescents and adults, demonstrate and teach civic responsibility, and increase community accountability.  This group, which has chosen to identify itself as the Coalition for Greater Community Collaboration, consists of local adolescents, youth advocates, the Pittsfield Police Department, Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Cultural Development and many other local partners.  The coalition has been diligently coming up with a variety of ways to accomplish some of their goals.  Among the projects that have been identified are an adolescent drop in center, athletic based mentoring, and a local Youth Summit.

The Coalition has secured support to hold the Youth Summit on September 8, 2012 on the campus of Berkshire Community College.  In cooperation with two local groups, Healing Winds and another group that is working to reestablish the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), we have managed to arrange for a powerful and dynamic motivational speaker to appear at the Youth Summit.  Mr. Jayson Williams is the author of, “Humbled: Letters from Prison,” and speaks to groups about his experiences as a professional basketball player, the decisions and circumstances that ended his career and sent him to jail, and the efforts that he has made at redemption since his release.