Fall River's Team FRESH (Fall River Extends Supportive Hands) and students from the LEADS Program at Morton and Talbot Middle Schools in Fall River participated in the Youth Civic Engagement conference at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth on May 6, 2009. Organized by the Governor's Office of Civic Engagement and the Governor's Youth Task Force, the forum brought students from Southcoast area communities together to celebrate and share their recent accomplishments. Efforts by the Fall River Youth V.O.I.C.E. (Volunteer Organizations to Initiate Community Engagement), a "supergroup"  composed of Team FRESH, Peaceful Coalition, TADA, Making Proud Choices, and YouthBuild that involve youth in their community were described, including recent work on a Youth Bill of Rights. They also talked about the new www.FallRiverYOUthZone.com web page that they created to help connect youth. For more information, contact Healthy Youth Task Force co-chairs Christian McCloskey at 508-324-2419, or Jamison Souza at 508-679-0922.
 

(Top row) Students from across the Southcoast look at displays from Morton and Talbot Middle Schools in the lobby of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMD. (Middle row) Nicholas Farias and Jennifer Benjamin give the keynote presentation describing the work that Team FRESH and Youth VOICE (Volunteer Organizations to Initiate Community Engagement), a "super group"  do to get youth involved in their community as students from Kuss Middle School and their faculty advisor Lori Jodoin and Principal Nancy Mullen listen. (Bottom row) Gary Marden, LEADS Program (Leadership for Educational Attainment Developed through Service) Coodinator, introduces LEADS coordinators Rumana Uddin from Talbot Middle School, Ibrahim Khonteh from Kuss Middle School and Fabienne Andrade from Morton Middle School whose project, including the production of a short, student-scripted-and-produced video with a provocative health message entitled "MyPyramid.gov", were presented at the Celebration.