Thousand Oaks Coalition to Focus on Teaching Youth to Respect Diversity

With help from the Anti-Defamation League, a local woman is putting together a community coalition that aims to help this city’s young people confront such hot-button issues as race, sexual orientation and religious stereotypes.

The goal of the fledgling group, called Diversity Inc., is to reach young people while they are still in their formative years and remind them to understand and respect the differences in others if they are not doing so already, according to founder Shoshana Brower.

Organizers declined to elaborate, but said several racially motivated incidents at Thousand Oaks high schools in recent years have led them to conclude that such an effort is needed before misunderstandings among the city’s increasingly diverse racial and ethnic groups become a big problem.

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Thousand Oaks has seen several racially tinged brawls in recent years. Perhaps the worst took place four years ago when a fistfight between Curtis Simmons, a Westlake High School football player, and James Lee, a student at the school, turned into a bloody melee that left Simmons and several of his friends badly wounded.

“The population in this community is definitely changing, and I see that as a really exciting thing,” said Brower, who formerly ran the Adventures in Building for Life’s Experiences, or ABLE, program for troubled youth in the Conejo Valley. “But that sometimes leads to problems. I felt that if we could get to these problems early on, we could prevent them from becoming serious.”

Hoping to put together a varied group of 20 adults to hold workshops for young people, Diversity Inc. is asking anyone who is interested to apply by Monday.

Through the coalition’s network of community sources--which include the Conejo Recreation and Park District, the Hispanic Organization for Personal Excellence (HOPE), the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Ventura County Corrections Services Agency--Diversity Inc. plans to tap young people and host a variety of four-hour workshops.

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The workshops will include a series of games and other informal activities designed to break the ice and get people talking. They will be modeled in part on a workshop that took place at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center last year, involving some students and a teacher from Westlake High who felt a need to discuss cultural awareness issues.

Although Diversity Inc. expects some young people to be referred to the program by probation officers and other authorities, organizers expect many teens will voluntarily participate, said Brower, who makes a living doing diversity awareness and sexual harassment prevention training. Part of the reason she decided to form Diversity Inc. is that she had $4,500 left over from the ABLE program, which ceased to exist about two years ago after a five-year run, and she wanted to put the money to good use.

To that end, Brower is planning to spread the word through flyers that will be distributed at local schools, the Teen Center, local churches and temples. She also hopes to solicit input from the city’s Youth Commission as well as the Teen Center’s advisory council.

“We don’t stand up there and lecture to them,” said Brower, also a trainer for the Anti-Defamation League’s World of Difference program, which is very similar to what Diversity Inc. hopes to accomplish.

“It’s a very interactive program.

“My feeling is that there will be some uncomfortable people,” she added. “But that’s part of the experience--getting people to talk about what makes them uncomfortable.”

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Sheriff’s Deputy John Wright, part of Thousand Oaks’ special enforcement gang detail, said he believes there is a demonstrated need for a group such as Diversity Inc. in the city.

“We just want everyone to understand where everyone else is coming from,” Wright said. “Yeah, we’ve had some racially motivated incidents over the past couple of years--not a lot of them--but we don’t want to have anything like that in the community.”

Karen Lindsey, the recreation services manager for the Conejo Recreation and Park District, said no specific incident led to the creation of Diversity Inc. It was more of a realization that as Thousand Oaks’ Asian and Latino populations continue to grow, there appears to be a clique mentality setting in among many young people.

“We would see kids grouping together with others from their race and ethnic group, white kids hanging with white kids, Asian kids hanging with Asian kids, and we wanted to break down those barriers,” Lindsey said. “I think what we’re delving into here is how we treat people that are different from ourselves.

“Kids tend to be mean to each other anyway, calling each other heavy and other things,” she added “The important thing to do is to show kids that the way they talk to others has an impact.”

Those interested in Diversity Inc. should call Shoshana Brower at 496-0789.