Barclay Boys Rites Project Celebrates Second Year

GHCC's Barclay Boys Rites Project celebrates its second year in 2008, and the program is still growing!

Barclay Boys began in 2007, in response to a call from mothers in the neighborhood for constructive summer activities for their pre-teen sons who were too old for summer camps but too young for the city's Youth Works program.  The 2007 program was funded by the generosity of churches and individual donors, and it engaged 10 boys in several weeks of challenging academic, athletic, and outdoor enrichment programs.  The project aimed to keep these boys out of drug and gang activity during long summer days.

In 2008, a partnership with Goucher College -- which had received a grant from the Department of Justice -- allowed the Barclay Boys Rites Project to work with 16 boys.  The program increased the number of "babas," African-American male elders specially trained in an African rites curriculum, from 1 to 4.  This summer's program added math tutoring, marching, and drilling to activities like chess, African drumming, community service projects, and field trips to Goucher, Beaver Dam, and Genesee Valley Outdoor Learning Center.  Each boy also received an honorary African name at a weekend camping trip.

The 2008 summer program closed with an incorporation ceremony on August 15.  You can watch the Barclay Boys drum in this video, a song that uses music to teach multiplication tables and was written by Mr. Hewitt, a teacher at Dallas F. Nicholas, Sr. Elementary School.

Recruitment for an African rites summer program for girls in the Barclay neighborhood will begin at Dallas F. Nicholas this fall.