"The commitments are my life, I couldn't live with myself if I was lying to LEAD and breaking the commitments." – Will

In order to participate in the LEAD program, teens must make a commitment to:

• Graduate from high school or get a GED
  
• Obey the law
  
• Develop and follow their life assignment.

The commitments came from Maj Hutchinson's experiences in working as a teacher, counselor and outdoor educator for 20 years. Looking at teens who had participated in LEAD they noticed some commonalities among those who were doing well in their lives – they had graduated from high school, stayed out of the juvenile justice system and they had a goal that they had been working towards in their lives. Over the years these concepts crystalized into the agreements that all teens in LEAD needed to follow in order to be in good standing and participate. Over the past eight years we have seen teens joining LEAD who had dropped out of school and were breaking the law (drinking and smoking). They chose to go back to school and stop using drugs and alcohol in order to participate in our program.

At LEAD we refer to getting a high school diploma as 'a ticket to the game.' While we recognize that there are many people who succeed in life without a high school diploma, we also recognize that low-income teens already have strikes against them. A high school diploma gives a teen a baseline, a starting point for adulthood career or academic future success. WIthout it, many jobs and college become unreachable.

Obeying the law is also important in LEAD. We believe that young people should stay out of the juvenile justice system at all costs. Several times young people have talked about being told to break the law as a way to get the counseling support they needed. At LEAD we work hard to network those support services for counseling, tutoring, etc. We do acknowledge exceptions to the "obey the law"commitment. Exceptions include: undocumented immigrant status, civil disobedience in political protest and homeless families and teens needing to camp and sleep outside.

The concept of the life assignment is at the core of the LEAD program. A life assignment provides a goal to work towards and becomes an organizing life focus. It also becomes the basis of a coaching (mentoring) relationship with a teen. This goal for positive world change becomes the reason to learn to improve writing and public speaking skills, to acquire higher education and training, to stay off drugs and alcohol, to find a mentor and follow their direction. LEAD's mission is to develop the leadership skills of low-income teens to empower them to address community problems and change the world. Each individual teen life assignment fulfills a part of that world change mission. An example of a life assignment in LEAD is a teen project called PCs4U - a program in which a LEAD teen got computers and parts donated and rebuilt working computers to donate to low income families. Nuestro Lugar/Our Place Teen Facility - is the result of a collective life assignment of many LEAD teens and adults in the 05-06 season to develop a multicultural, teen initiated teen center in downtown Eugene.

An unique characteristic about LEAD is that the adults involved in direct service agree to follow the commitments as well as the teens. The adults must be continual learners, obey the law and identify and follow their life assignments. This creates an environment of trust and equal footing rather than a "do as I say not as I do approach." The teens know the adults are working hard for world change as well and hear them share about their successes and frustrations with their life assignments.

Teen comments on the LEAD commitments:

"To me it puts belief back into teens, saying that they can't succeed without negative behavior. Places I go adults just say 'kids are going to smoke and drink and do it anyways' but at LEAD its just like 'no, you aren't going to, you are going to deal with it with support. We'll give you the support that you can achieve without these things. You deal with it together." –Terra

"They are like guidelines to keep me going down and on the right path. "– Caleb