After churning over numerous ideas with numerous people, he conceived of Youth Venture. As a not-for-profit organization, its overarching goal is to encourage young people to help themselves and in so doing, to help those around them, their schools, their neighborhoods, and eventually to become the community leaders of tomorrow. A quiet, gentle man, Drayton glows when he describes the possibilities he has in mind. He is determined that the young organization (the first Venturer was chosen in 1995) will snowball, with hundreds of partners reaching hundreds of thousands of young people and creating youth empowerment in communities all over the country.

Who's Who

Youth Venture brings together four groups of people: Venturers, the young people with ideas for activities that would be good for them and their community; allies, adults who enjoy working with young people; partners, community organizations or businesses with strong community ties; and funding partners, who help provide the small amount of capital needed to get the ventures off the drawing board.

The allies are there to offer advice and support while leaving the young venturers in full control of their endeavors. The partners offer a variety of services, from premises where the ventures can take place to loans or grants to seed the emerging enterprises. Throughout the process, Youth Venture is vigilant about ensuring the young person's role in actually initiating and implementing the idea.

Youth Venture is not an organization you can join. Rather, young people must apply and be selected to become venturers. For the time being, Youth Venture is concentrating its efforts in inner city areas, where Drayton feels the need is greatest. This year, the small, Washington D.C.-based staff piloted the program in partnership with three youth groups: ASPIRA Association, an organization for Latino and Puerto Rican youth in New York; One-to-One/The National Mentoring Partnership which operates out of Boston, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. The pilot programs will be evaluated at the end of this year and if satisfactory, Youth Venture will be introduced next to cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, Tampa and others.

Language Lessons and Candy

What do youth ventures look like? Mostly, they grow out of a need perceived by the venturer. They can be as simple as a few kids getting together to sell cookies for a school fund-raiser or banding together to clean up the neighborhood; they can be purely business ideas, but Youth Venture requires a social component where something will be given back to the school, neighborhood or community.

Hilda Salazar is a typical youth venturer. Hilda came to America from Guatemala in 1989, when she was nine. Though she had no trouble learning English, she could see that many Latino students not only knew little English but were also forgetting how to write and speak well in Spanish. Latino parents often worked long hours and had little time to acquire the English skills necessary for getting involved in their children's education.

To counter the dryness of many English-Spanish workbooks, Hilda decided, with the aid of a friend, Mauricio Nolasco, to organize a group of Latino students in Washington D.C. to write a bilingual workbook, using Latino culture as a base, the better to draw their parents into the bilingual educational process. She and Mauricio called their venture Transforming Futures. As well as publishing a bilingual workbook, the two students have recorded a companion pronunciation audio tape. They have support from the Latin-American Youth Center and the first book and tape have gone sufficiently well that they are starting to work on another book for older children. Youth Venture offered Hilda and Mauricio the financial boost and a network of support they needed to launch their endeavor.

Pat Nichols, Youth Venture's President, would like to see more efforts like Hilda's. Nichols insists that, "It's becoming increasingly important in today's society that young people learn to develop the twin qualities of initiative and teamwork. Youth Venture is designed to allow them to articulate and pursue their dreams by engaging other young people in those dreams."

But The Door lost its lease and moved downtown to Manhattan's Soho area. Relocation costs meant budget cuts, which meant closing the caf?. A lot of people missed the caf? and realized it had helped draw people into the center, but estimated costs to restart it were, said Chris, "an unbelievable amount of money."

The kids wanted to do something. So it was agreed to buy a large tool box on wheels, which could be opened up when needed and locked at night. They named the new storage cart The Sweet Box. After a while, Chris became de facto manager. He changed the location to a more centrally trafficked area so The Sweet Box would be more visible and sales rose. Then, recalls Chris, "other Door members came along and said 'Can I be part of it?' Once we started making a profit, people who were volunteering their time asked if they could be paid, so I figured that we could split a percentage of the profits."

Chris enjoyed running The Sweet Box but in the back of his mind there was always the idea that a caf? would be even better. Then Chris learned about Youth Venture from The Door's new supervisor. He didn't need much convincing to apply.

Some Hard Questions

The application process involved interviews with "questions like 'Why do you think the community needs that service? How will they benefit from it? Will there be others to maintain the project after you're gone?' They were good questions and the answers could convince them whether the person had what it takes to start a venture that could go on for years." Chris also had to describe how he would structure the business, plan the budget, and handle the merchandise. The Youth Venture selection panel approved his application, and Chris opened the Sweet Stop Caf?.

For Chris, launching and managing the Sweet Stop Caf? was his wake-up call. "I didn't apply to college because I didn't know what I wanted to study there. But the thing I really loved was getting the Sweet Stop Caf? up and running. And then it hit me: this is the sort of thing I want to do, have my own business. So when I go to college, I'll study business management and administration."

Chris, now 20, is looking to phase himself out of the day-to-day management of his venture. "But," he is quick to add, "I could become an ally." The Sweet Stop Caf? has also received a grant to help train the more experienced workers in management skills and to train new workers. "This will be great for us," says Chris, "Now The Door, which has an Employability Skills program, will be passing people on to us."

The skills Chris learned through his venture stood him in good stead. He parlayed them into several part-time jobs, and now works full time at the Manhattan Library. The more dedicated of his helpers also parlayed their experience into jobs. His allies at The Door have assured him that the Sweet Stop Caf? is here to stay. "I want to come back five or ten years from now and see the caf? flourishing . . . and to know I did something for this community."

Drayton insists that "every young person who succeeds in creating an ongoing organization knows deeply that he or she is competent and powerful." And that sense of quiet accomplishment is what Chris De Leon has.