Ronnie Sidney:
Personal Statement:
March 20, 2003:


Hi, My name is Ronnie Sidney and I am a sophomore at Old Dominion University. I am majoring in Business Management and later on pursuing a Masters in Urban Services. My objective is to begin my own non-profit organization catered toward young children and adults of color. By no means am I racist or discriminatory, but I feel as an African American it is my responsibility to get our house in order. The program will be community oriented and will provide educational and financial assistance to community members that seek it. My main goal is to create a sense of responsibility and self -sufficiency amongst those in the urban African American communities. It is those two skills that determine the success or failure of man and his offspring. But that program is one that I wanted to get established down the road, right now I'm focused on my new program "Campus To Classroom." Throughout this paper, I will give you a brief synopsis the "Campus to Classroom Peer Leadership Program" and how the idea was conceived.

The "Campus To Classroom Peer Leadership Program" was during by a conference that I was involved in while I was in High School called YADAPP (Youth Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Project). During the program, each school had to draw up an Action plan in which you could take back to your respective school and pursue. Unfortunately, I was the only one there from my school and I didn't take the initiative to make it happen. But I always had the desire to get the program started, but I never quite had the resources I needed to begin it. So to make a long story short, a couple of months back the idea came back to me in my Accounting class. So I had begun to scribble down some ideas and now you have it. Those ideas were inspired by my current experiences with schools in the Norfolk area. I volunteer and mentor at two schools in Portsmouth and I have noticed the lack of commitment and concern of area teachers. Many of the schools are predominantly African American, but most of the administration are older Caucasians. I feel that college students have an obligation to give back to the communities in which are educated in and this is the perfect opportunity for them to do so. I also believe that if the kids were in constant contact with positive college students of color, they would become inspired to achieve higher heights. That idea comes from the experience in which I had during High School in a mentoring group called SODA (Students Opposed to Drugs and Alcohol. During SODA, a group of four High Schoolers would devise a lesson plan that was catered towards drug and alcohol prevention. Each and every week that we visited the students would welcome us with open arms, despite our presentation taking up their entire recess. But without further a due, here is a brief outline of the "Campus to Classroom Peer Mentoring Program" explaining its makeup, purpose, and how to measure its effectiveness. 


The "Campus to Classroom" program will be composed of area middle school 8th graders. The children would be chosen on a voluntary basis or recommended to the program by a school official.  I feel that it is important to focus on 8th graders because they are more mature and are one step away from high school. The program would be run through M.A.P. (An on campus organization that i'm involved in) and hopefully supported through this grant or by others. The idea of the program is to match the 8th graders with positive role models in which they can relate to, and offer them assistance from outside of the school system. The groups will be separated, with males attending sessions led by males and the females attending sessions led by females. Researchers found that gender pairings increase the comfort level between peer and peer-mentor, especially during female pairings. It would include approximately 20-25 students each individual session. Each session would then be presented by a group of four to six M.A.P. volunteers and last approximately one semester. The program will be held once a week during the school day for an hour. The reason why the program would be beneficial during school is because it gives each child the chance to participate and it prevents any transportation problems. Also, with the program only being held once a week for an hour, the children aren't missing a lot of instruction. 

The programs main aim is to create a comfortable forum for kids to communicate and interact in. It will encourage creative expression in forms of poetry, song, dance, art and lecture. It is also important for us to practice respect and discipline, rather it be student to student, student to mentor or mentor to mentor. Our mission is to educate them about history, careers, media, stereotypes, philosophy, education and most importantly real life. We will do that be creating lesson plans before each weekly session and incorporate manual presentations, movies, lectures, skits and book work. We will also work with members outside of community who can give the kids a better understanding of certain occupations and professions. We will also help emphasize each presentation with guest speakers and possibly out of school trips. Each session will also periodically perform workshops on leadership, communication, responsibility and values. It is also important for the team of volunteers to incorporate current issues and then create a roundtable in which the group can discuss those topics. It is also important for us to make the sessions as informative and instructive as possible. Examples of possible information would be the dangers of drugs, unprotected sex, financial assistance and counseling. More importantly, we can direct them professionals who are able to help them. 

There is a quote that says, "Be self-reliant and your success is assured." I feel that self-reliance is the greatest gift that you can teach someone. But unfortunately, people tend to define and measure success differently. There are really no qualitative methods to measure a child's success through the program except through academics and school performance. That is why I chose to target area middle schools that aren't meeting the SOL accreditation requirements and who have an extremely high failure rate. I know that through the "Campus to Classroom" program, those students will be more encouraged to excel academically because of a keen understanding of educations role in their future. Some other qualitative measurements of qualitative data could be attendance, number of behavior reports and grades. But the intangibles that the program offer such as interpersonal skills, conflict resolution and enhance self-esteem will lay the foundation academic achievement. Other ways in which we will measure the programs success is through random evaluations and student feedback. The evaluations will be done by an outside source possibly a school official, and it will gauge the effectiveness of our presentations through student feedback. We will also have the kids establish journals in which they can voluntarily keep notes of each session and then if they chose, have those journals reviewed by a member outside of the "Campus to Classroom Peer Leadership Program". The third party source would then relay any assessments to the "Campus To Classroom Peer Leadership Program" that would help increase effectiveness in our relationship between the kids and with our presentations. Several researchers feel that the journals are important to both peer and peer-mentor because it gives the kids a way to discuss personal issues in private. It also helps the mentors create possible solutions that may help them organize their thoughts, prepare lessons, make documentation and analysis.


In conclusion, the whole idea of "Campus To Classroom Peer Mentoring Program" is to introduce teens to different avenues and options in life. If the program can help inspire teens to reach higher heights than that would be great, but my purpose is to show the kids that we care. Many parents and teachers fail to connect with their children on a one on one level and that creates problems. People fail to remember that it takes a community to raise a child and not just the parents and the school system.  But without funding and community commitment, this program may forever remain just an idea. I am willing to sacrifice what little money I have to bridge to get this program off the ground. It would be great if we could kick the program off this fall but without financing, it would be a tough. It is also important for these ideas to be expounded upon and spread throughout schools and colleges all over America. This program can prove very beneficial in the long run for both the volunteers and mentors. We must start giving back to our communities because our families collectively make up those communities. I believe that the most dedicated workers are those in the community and through productive organizations like this, we will get things back on the right track. Thanks for reviewing my presentation, may God bless you.