By: Angelica Gomez, student at Champion Charter School(a Diploma Plus school) in Brockton, MA

We are a group of young people determined to improve education.During the days of February 8-10, 2007, six dedicated students and one dedicated adult got together at the Met Center in Providence, RI and discussed how exactly to do that. We are called Organized Youth for Educational Alternatives, also known as OYEA.  Our main goals are for:

1. Students and alumni to promote and support alternative educational methods and the students that they serve.

2. Students and alumni to provide “critical friends feedback” and demand improvement in their schools, while suggesting pro-active solutions.

3. Students and alumni to empower and inspire alternative and traditional public school students to be leaders in their schools and communities and to create lasting change in their environments.

Over the course of the two days we conducted a site visit of the Met School’s Public Street Campus, discussed how to publicize our ideas and held a conference call with Joe Scantlebury and Anh Nguyen, who work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We also held a conference call with Jim Hamel, who is the Director of National Partnerships and New England Region for an organization called Youth Venture. We also had meetings with Dennis Littky, also known as Doc, who is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Met Center and the Big Picture Company and Thomas Brendler, who is the Communications Director at Big Picture.

OYEA consists of people with many different talents, each of which plays an important role in what we are trying to accomplish. We have many writers, public speakers and technology specialists. We may be young, but we are smart. We are trying to do things that adults have been doing for years, except we are young adults trying to make a change in the way we live and learn.