Harmony

4901 Main Street, Suite 300
Kansas City, MO 64112
phone: 816-333-5059
website: www.kcharmony.org

Youth Leadership Institute (YLI was formerly called "Anytown") educates high school students about the systemic nature of oppression and provides them with the skills for improving inter-group relations and conflict resolution, and promotes advocacy and leadership development.

Through experiential activities, simulation exercises, and large and small discussion groups, young people explore and address the complexities of critical issues of discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, class, age, physical ability, and religion.

YLI programming engages youth in purposeful, goal-directed dialogue to increase their awareness of the development of attitudes and behaviors that contribute to bias, bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. In learning from each other, participants gain valuable leadership skills involving problem solving, group dynamics, conflict management, coalition building, inter-group relations, communication, and advocacy.

Finally, YLI provides opportunities for young people to develop action plans to confront issues that divide their homes, schools, and communities which they can and implement with the ongoing support of Harmony (formerly HarmonyNCCJ) when they return from the Anytown leadership institute.

In 1999, Oprah Winfrey, focusing for the third time that year on how NCCJ was addressing critical issues for today's youth, said these programs “literally transform children's lives.”