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Stanley Pollack founds The Center for Teen Empowerment
With the support of the Boston, Hayden and Riley Foundations, Stanley Pollack founded The Center for Teen Empowerment, Inc. to demonstrate both the power of the TE Model to generate solutions to difficult problems that confront urban communities and the model's potential applications in a wide range of social service and educational settings. -
First TE Youth Organizers Hired
The Center began work in Boston's South End/Lower Roxbury community by hiring a group of 14 teens as youth organizers. Through the TE training process, these youth identified an initial goal of finding solutions to the epidemic of gang violence that had taken the lives of several of their friends. They began by organizing a series of community meetings for youth, police, and adults. -
First Youth Peace Conference
At the first TE Youth Peace Conference, TE youth organizers brought together five rival gangs to create a peace treaty. The Youth Peace Conferences have become annual events in Boston and Somerville. -
Empowering Students and Teachers
TE's first school-based site opened at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in September 1994. In 1996-2000 TE opened sites at English High School, then at Dorchester High, then South Boston High. Schools sites used the TE Model to systematically involve students in analyzing their school community and involving students, teachers, and administrators in improving school climate, which led to higher attendance, less fighting, and lower dropout rates. -
TE begins working at English High
According to TE headmaster Jose Duarte, " ... Over and over again I have witnessed Teen Empowerment doing great work building community between our students and our staff and helping EHS teachers learn how to engage students who have traditionally been very difficult to reach." -
Consulting for Year Up
TE began helping a fledgling Year Up develop a behavior management system and interactive methodology. TE continues to provide consultation and training to Year Up sites around the country as they work o close the Opportunity Divide by providing urban young adults with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential. -
After-School Programs: What young people think and want
In August 2001, TE released After-School Programs in Boston: What Young People Think and Want, a study funded by the Barr Foundation that included focus groups and surveys with over 400 youth and youth workers. -
A Decade of Work Toward a Lifetime of Change
TE's 10th annual Youth Peace Conference drew over 800 youth to John Hancock Hall in Boston. Click here to see video highlights from the first ten Peace Conferences. Segments of that Conference are available for purchase on DVD as discussion starters for classrooms and youth groups. -
TE's 10th Anniversary Celebration
Some 400 guests gathered at the Boston Marriott to mark TE's 10th anniversary at the annual Celebration of Hope and Caring. Read the Boston Globe's coverage.. -
TE Rochester Opens
In 2003, Doug Ackley brought TE's adolescent intervention and prevention strategy to Rochester, NY, which was experiencing an explosion of gang violence. TE staff interviewed more than 120 applicants and hired ten teens who began work in October. -
Establishing TE's Somerville Site
In 2003, alarming rates of suicide, substance abuse and violence among adolescents prompted Somerville, MA Mayor Joseph Curtatone to hire TE to assess youth services and then ask us to open a site to help address the needs. TE's site opened in fall 2004. In January 2005, TE's Filling The Gaps Conference generated ideas that have helped turn the city around. -
Dot Com! Dorchester Community Site Opens
As a part of our strategic plan, TE begins to expand or community-based sites in Boston starting with the opening of our Dorchester site on Bowdoin Street. In 2009, the dorchester site moved to 21 Balfour St. in partnership with Nuestra CDC. -
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Urban-Suburban Exchanges
In 2006, 2007, and 2008, TE organized exchanged between classes at The English High School in Boston and suburban Winchester High School. After preparation that involved readings, discussion, and student-to-student email exchanges, students at each school spent a day visiting the other. For more information about this program, see TE's Spring 2006 newsletter. -
TE Egleston Square Opens
In 2007, TE opened a third community-based Boston site in the Egleston Square neighborhood of Roxbury-Jamaica Plain in partnership with Urban Edge. -
TE Rochester moves to SW
TE opened it's first neighborhood based youth organizing site in Rochesters SouthWest Quadrant, at the corner of Genesee Street and Arnett Boulevard. -
Bright Idea Award
TE Rochester's Youth-Police Unity Project wins a Bright Idea award from the Ash Center at Harvard University's Kenendy School of Government. Bright Ideas is designed to recognize and share creative government initiatives around the country with interested public sector, nonprofit, and academic communities. -
New TE Headquarters!
TE's new Roxbury location is at 384 Warren Street. This space houses both our administrative headquarters and a youth organizing program serving the Warren Gardens community. We share the space with our partner, Higher Ground, a place-based initiative founded by Hubie Jones to improve youth and community outcomes in the Warren Gardens area.
