It’s easy for men & women, especially youth to see cause and effect when a stone
is thrown into a pond and the ripples move outward to the farthest shore. With day-to-day life choices involving family, school,
and the community, cause and effect is not always so clearly recognize
Aginah Carter-Shabazz, founder and director
of CHOICEZ, a program designed for urban middle and high school youth to help them understand that they are responsible for
the choices they make and the impact their choices have on their lives.
In 1998 my daughter was arrested and incarcerated for a heartbreaking 18 months for a crime
she neither committed nor orchestrated. Although she was acquitted of the crime, her life has been changed forever. Her experience
was the consequence of choices she had made about the company she kept, money, and
materialism. The subsequent trial and her release are the subject of my award-winning documentary Justice for Her and the
inspiration for my acclaimed memoir CHOICEZ, a reflection on my own life and the consequences of choices I made in my youth.
Everyday, women and men throughout Philadelphia are living with the consequences of their own and other people’s choices
about drugs, alcohol and easy money; choices that take a toll on their social, economic and political well-being. Influenced
by poverty, single parent households, crime, drug abuse, disease, and teen pregnancies, these students are experiencing school
drop out rates, unemployment, and youth incarceration at an alarming rate.
CHOICEZ’s
mission is to guide, support and facilitate women and men, especially women of all ages, through creative interactive sessions,
to design their “Plan for Living,” a plan based on the goal of achieving the best for themselves and their communities.
We advocate self-discovery, self-discipline and cooperative relationships as essential elements in preparing youth to be effective
members of the local and global society.
In February 2009, after reading my book and reviewing the documentary, Corrections Classification Program Manager Phyllis
Jones-Carter invited me to speak at the State Correctional Institution-Chester, a drug and alcohol treatment institution.
Inmates at SCI Chester are serving the 17 months before expiration of their minimum sentence.
Ms. Jones- Carter ordered several copies of the book and a copy of the CHOICEZ
documentary for inmates to read and watch. With the inmates’ overwhelmingly positive response to my visit and the tools,
Ms. Jones-Carter asked me to lead a CHOICEZ workshop. The workshop was very successful.
In workshops that use
my documentary, Justice for Her and
the book CHOICEZ as the project’s primary instructional tools, participants begin to learn that every choice creates its
own consequence that impacts not just the individual, but family and community. Other workshop
tools include:
▪ Thinking/Reasoning Skills
▪ Communicating With
Others: The Power of Words and Journaling
▪ Self-Assessment and Self-Care
▪ Creating Positive Outcomes: Pausing, Calming, Slowing Down
▪
Exploring Personal Skills and Talents
▪
Visioning/Scripting/Staging
