The Young Men With POWER (Purpose, Optimism, Wisdom, Engagement, and Responsibility) program is targeted towards young men in grades 7th, 8th & 9th who live in Baltimore, MD who want to develop moral character and leadership skills but don’t have good resources to do so in their neighborhoods. The Young Men With POWER program will be catered towards young men who are willing to make a difference i
n their own lives by building self-esteem, ethical values, and cultural proficiency. Additionally, the program will serve as a creative outlet for the participating young men, so that they can express and live up to their full potential. The purposes of this program are to teach and empower each participant through a series of goals and objectives in order for them to become educated young men of tomorrow, who will possess moral character, self-awareness and promote community service. The community problems that this program will address and solve are the lack of gender specific programs targeting young men in Baltimore City. We believe the lack of attention given to young men is the cause of the problem. Most leadership and mentoring programs are mainly targeted towards females or both genders as one. It is important to address this problem because young men are faced with many disadvantages and difficulties in everyday life. Compared to young females, young men are more likely to drop out of school, commit crimes, become incarcerated, and find difficulty in maintaining a job. By having a program that targets young men only it will address some of those disadvantages and difficulties that young men are faced with. The program also will allow the young men to make connections with other teens and adults who could assist them with other tasks in life.