On Saturday, June 3, NJ All Stars sponsored the 14th Newark All Stars Talent Show at Newark's Barringer High School. More than 320 Newark-ers came out - as performers, volunteers and audience members. Mayor-elect Cory Booker stopped by to congratulate the performers and youth producers and accepted a booklet of poems and raps they had written sharing their vision of a better community. The Star Ledger published a two-page feature on the event.

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In February, the Development School for Youth (DSY) expanded from two to four fourteen-week cycles, doubling its enrollment capacity. The expansion of the six-year old leadership-training program responds to the growing demand for development training from Newark-area young people.

"Our young people are spreading the word throughout Newark, East Orange, Irvington and other poor, urban NJ communities that the DSY program offers them a genuine opportunity to grow culturally, socially and emotionally and to learn how to succeed in the world," says DSY director Gloria Strickland. "More and more young people are coming to me and saying, 'We need development.' I am thrilled to grow the program to meet that need."

Strickland began the Newark-based leadership-training program in February 2000. With the help of several Newark high school teachers and school-to-career coordinators who invited her to speak to their students, Strickland recruited her first class of 16 students. By September, 2005, Strickland was making recruitment visits to 15 different high schools in the Newark area and speaking with more than 2,000 sophomores, juniors and seniors, offering them the chance to apply to the program. In December, 2005, 39 students graduated from the DSY's 12th training cycle, the largest class in the history of the program. Strickland launched this spring's expansion with the most diverse student body to date. Students not only came from every neighborhood of Newark and surrounding communities, but for the first time from Jersey City and Bayonne. Thirty percent of the students learned about the program through "word of mouth," and forty percent were young men, a significant increase.

New Jersey's business community, which provides the financial support for the DSY as well as serving as the "teaching community" for the weekly workshops and summer internships that introduce students to the corporate world, has continued to partner with Strickland to meet the young people's demand for development. This summer, more than 25 companies will sponsor 60 paid summer internships for DSY graduates. In 2007, NJ companies will sponsor close to 100 summer positions.

To find out how you or your company can get involved in the DSY, call Bonny Gildin at 973-622-5506 ext. 306. For information on volunteering, call Christina Pollak at 973-622-5506 ext. 302. To find out more about the All Stars Project in Newark, please visit our website.