Terrence Foushee - On the history of the Blue Ribbon Program (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): Can you tell me about the Blue Ribbon Program and how it came to be and what all it entails?

Terrence Foushee (TF): I think that the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocacy Program started in ‘95 with the main goal of closing the achievement gap. The program is an opportunity access program for students of color and pretty much the main component of the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocacy Program is matching identified Black and Brown scholars within Chapel Hill and Carrboro City Schools with a local mentor. Somebody who signs up to spend at least two hours a week with students. It’s not necessarily meant to be a program that focuses on academic support even though there are components that help out with academic support, but it's more about creating partnerships between some of our community adults and some of our students to help one, bridge what I would consider the generational gaps but also help engage in enriching and fun activities for the students that allows them to figure out some things when they have extra resources, because I think with the idea of mentorship - again, the connotation sometimes is that these students need a father figure or another mother figure and that's not necessarily the case, that's not the case in most of our relationships. It's really about - what is another resource I can provide to help our students of color be able to succeed even more within this program. The program started in about ‘95. We have lots of different components to the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocacy Program. First, we have our Blue Ribbon Scholars which is about 60 to 70 students from about fourth to twelfth grade who are matched with community mentors. Then we have a bunch of different programs. One of those programs is a youth leadership institute, which was the camp that I was talking about earlier but it is a service leadership club that happens during the year at all of our high schools. Students participate in service learning projects, they do a camp over the summer, they also get to go on college tours, and we do an alternative spring break trip every year which includes college visits, service projects, and fun activities. We have the BluePrint and the Dreamers programs which are pretty much all kinda a feeder system to the YLI (Youth Leadership Institute) program. BluePrint focuses mainly on our middle school population and they engage in lots of team building activities and they work through STEAM, science, technology, and the arts all together, and Dreamers is for our 4th-6th and it’s pretty much about exploration of self but also the community around. Another one of our programs is Level Up which is also pretty new, so the last three programs: Dreamers, BluePrint, and Level Up are pretty much new programs that we started in the last 3-5 years. Level Up specifically works on empowering our young men of color, so middle school and high school we meet every third Saturday of each month to participate in team building, discussions around issues that we care about as far as being Black and Brown in Chapel Hill and what that means but also providing the space of empowerment. We also do career exploration stuff like that and other enrichment opportunities.