“I will never forget all that I received from RMM and thank you especially for teaching me the importance of empowerment and giving people choices” -- Chakera McIntosh.

“It seemed like we were pioneers, leading the way for America’s future.” -- Prisco Acevedo

These two quotes come from graduates of our Youth Arts Group. Any list of accomplishments for the Youth Empowerment Program must begin with the feelings of empowerment that participants experience. When a young person with limited resources who faces many barriers feels that they have been able to make a difference in their community, and if that results in a sense of hope; then we feel a sense of accomplishment and hope ourselves.

Numerous times, these sentiments have been felt and expressed by participants in our Program. There have also been accomplishments that are more readily documented including:

• In the twenty years of the Overnight Leadership Camp over two thousand people have participated.
• RMM has created three scholarship funds – contributing over $100,000 to students
• The Youth Arts Group has created one of the first (as far as we know) youth-led, youth beneficiary micro-finance loan program in the United States
• RMM created a summer internship program for our high school students that makes it economically feasible for them to spend the summer developing their leadership skills
• We have offered summer day leadership programs in four rural counties
• We have trained over one hundred college interns
• Over 90% of the graduates of the Youth Arts Group have gone on to college – all of them, save a handful, the first in their families to attend college. And we have watched them go onto such institutions as: Bard College, Rochester Institute of Technology, The College of New Rochelle, SUNY and the American University in Paris
• Our graduates have gone on to continue to make a difference in the world as they have helped create a radio station in Africa, worked for a children’s advocacy organization in London, taught English in Czechoslovakia, raised thousands of dollars for a cancer program, served as deputy press director for the Obama Campaign in Florida and the Environmental Protection Agency and as an outreach paralegal for a worker rights law center. (Of course there are many, many other accomplishments!)