The Dorchester Youth Council poses with Leah Bailey of the Boston Globe Foundation and Tom Kennedy of Sovereign Bank.

With assistance, all youth have the capability to make a difference,” proclaimed 17 year old Andrew Klein from a podium at the Boston Globe during the SCI Dorchester Youth Council’s 3rd Annual Mini Grant Award Ceremony. The event, held last Tuesday night, honored the hard work of the members of the Dorchester Youth Council and the youth recipients of the 2007 Mini Grant Awards.

The Mini Grant process awards youth-led community service-learning projects that aim to strengthen the Dorchester community. After months of drafting an application, interviewing groups, and intense deliberation, the youth council chose seven worthy projects to fund. The grant recipients span many different neighborhoods and topics from tackling negative media images, to creating a traveling peace mural, to planting gardens throughout the community. The range of interesting projects clearly shows the initiative and insight of the young people organizing in Dorchester.

The 2007 grantees include: The Food Project’s Build a Garden Project, Close to Home Youth Team’s Acting Our Against Teen Dating Violence performances, Grover Cleveland Middle School’s Peace Week, Smith Leadership Academy’s Media Bust project, B.O.L.D. Teen’s Peace Mural project, Boston Project Ministries Safe Park’s Project, and Dorchester Bay EDC’s Youth Violence Documentary.

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