BARRY WILLIAMS/Special

Anisa Wright, Aryana Brantley and Khadijah Powell (from left) enjoy the music during an awards banquet for the Prejudice Awareness Club at Young Middle School in Atlanta.

Atlanta grows more diverse every day. So how do you foster a less prejudiced, more tolerant atmosphere in the workplaces and communities of the future? You begin by teaching young people how to value differences.

That's the mission of the Anti-Prejudice Consortium, a nonprofit organization that works with metro Atlanta middle schools and youth organizations to stop prejudice and promote respect among all people.

"Anything we can do today to change how students treat each other will affect the workplace later," said Richard Welch, executive director of the Anti-Prejudice Consortium, which marked its 10th anniversary this year.

"We like to work with 7th-graders, because at that age students are starting to move away from the attitudes of their families and starting to develop their own," he added. "It's a time when the greatest changes can take place."

The consortium brings about 500 students from 50 metro Atlanta middle schools each year to a Power Over Prejudice (POP) Summit on the Georgia Tech campus. Students from public, private and religious schools are divided into breakout sessions with trained facilitators to participate in awareness-raising activities.

The students learn the fallacy of first impressions, how cliques are formed and how stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes can lead to bullying and other common behavioral issues that plague middle schools.

"Bullies often get their satisfaction from others watching," Welch said. "If you take away the satisfaction, you take away the power of the bully."

Members of the group talk about the problems they see in their schools and how they can be leaders and make better decisions. Each member is asked to become an ambassador for tolerance at his or her school.

At the end of the day, school groups reassemble to brainstorm anti-prejudice activities for the school year.

"Our volunteers offer tools and support, but at the heart, the students are developing this program, because they know what other students are thinking," Welch said.

Hands-on diversity

Students from Hopewell Middle School in Alpharetta decided to put diversity before the eyes of the student population every day; they painted a diversity mural in the lunchroom.

Students from Young Middle School in Atlanta started a Prejudice Awareness Club after attending the POP Summit in 2003.

"The group has grown quite a bit, and the kids always have more ideas than we have time to do," said Trudi Williams, counselor and adviser to the club.

The club kicked off the school year with a Cultural Diversity Extravaganza, which featured a speaker, international food and exhibits. After a special-needs student joined the group, members volunteered to work with the Special Olympics as a service project. Club members give morning announcements about diversity, and they mentor and help new students adjust to campus.

They also sponsor Ebony and Ivory Day every Thursday, asking teachers to wear black-and-white clothing or the "Stop Stereotypes" T-shirts that the group sells to raise funds.

"The club members learn about team-building, peer mediation, leadership and communication skills, and former students have told us that it really helped them in high school," Williams said.

Involving students, teachers and parents in its activities, the Prejudice Awareness Club won first place for its in-school follow-up program activities (2004-05) and was recognized by the state PTSA for its positive contributions to the school's climate and culture.

"Our role as advisers is to step back and motivate the kids to take charge. We want to empower them because students can reach other students better than we can," Williams said.

Entertaining and teaching

Sharrell Luckett sees that happen every week with Empowered Youth Entertainment, a program sponsored by the YWCA of Greater Atlanta, in partnership with the Anti-Prejudice Consortium. As YWCA artistic director and coordinator for the diversity education program, Luckett spends two evenings a week with a troupe of 45 actors, chosen from high schools in metro Atlanta.

Luckett and the teens brainstorm and then write and practice short plays and songs about diversity that they perform at middle schools, churches and community organizations.

"The students audition and are chosen for their dramatic, writing or musical talent and interest. We try and target high schools that don't have performing arts programs, to give kids an outlet," Luckett said.

Each actor receives professional training, a head shot, a make-up kit, a T-shirt and a certificate.

"But what they also gain is an awareness of what it means to break down barriers. They start learning about other cultures, how to form friendships and help each other," Luckett said.

She knows that the program is having an impact — not only on the middle school audiences who respond enthusiastically, but on the troupe itself. "When you see members of different high schools and cultures loving to come together and learning to depend on each other, then you know it's making a difference that will eventually filter out to others," Luckett said.

With more than 5,000 students and 400 counselors having participated since 1997, POP Summits are seeing positive results as well. "The POP students take an awareness survey before and after attending, and we can measure positive change in attitudes," Welch said.

The Emory University Rollins School of Public Health evaluated in-school follow-up programs and interviewed POP ambassadors and other students from September 2005 to May 2006.

"Fifty percent of students who attended the POP Summit had talked to others about what they'd learned outside of school, and 30 percent who hadn't attended remembered an anti-stereotyping event from their school," Welch said. "The word is getting out."