Today's Baltimore Sun highlights another effective program aimed specifically at young Black males. The 100 strong male role model at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County has male high school students involved in highly positive school and community service.

Woodlawn's "100 Strong Male Role Models" program is so successful that it has begun attracting national interest, as schools from the Northeast and the Midwest seek advice on how to build a student group that gives young men in struggling schools the tools to thrive.

Sharing and serving seem to be their specialties. At the beginning of the school year, they sponsored a "Teacher Appreciation" banquet. During Thanksgiving and Christmas, they fed hundreds of families and distributed donated gifts to area children. They mentor students at Windsor Mill Middle School to help them prepare for the transition to high school. They tutor each other and others who need help at school.

During a six-week leadership camp last summer, they painted bathroom stalls at the school, planted a garden at the building's entrance, plastered encouraging posters along the hallways and invested in combination locks for every locker so students could use them for storage.

"We asked ourselves, what can we do to make this look like a school again," said Jermaine Isaac, who is the group's first junior to be chosen president. "We thought people might ruin the garden. But they didn't mess with it. They respected it and didn't touch it."
As a sign of solidarity, the group's members don matching black T-shirts emblazoned with their logo every Tuesday, and they wear suits and ties on Thursdays. They stand out in hallways filled with chattering teens, and that's the point.

"Being around these guys with high GPAs and high standards helps put me in the position to want to do better for myself," said Christopher Roary Jr., 17, the group's coordinator. "I'm preparing for more of a college life."


Waith said the group has given him a network of peers who have his best interest at heart. "They give me that extra push I need," he said. "It's more like a brotherhood."