Kourtney-Shea Yurko and Saladin Islam sing and play for the highly receptive audience at this year’s Youth Peace Conference.

By Jack Adams

Every year for the past eight years, the Somerville Center for Teen Empowerment holds a Youth Peace Conference. The 2014 conference was hosted last Saturday evening at the East Somerville Community School, reopened this year after it burned down 10 years ago.

This year’s conference was called “Rising from the Ashes,” a nod to the rebuilding of the East Somerville Community School having risen from its former ashes. Stephanie Berkowitz, the director of external relations at the Center for Teen Empowerment, said it was also a reference to how all of Somerville has bounced back after setbacks over the years.

At this year’s event, there was an ice cream social in the school’s cafeteria before the stage show began. Many of the Teen Empowerment Center’s partnering organizations, including Groundwork Somerville, Somerville Community Access TV and Bridge over Troubled Waters, had tables and spoke with students.

The peace conference is the culmination of an entire year’s worth of work for the students hired by the Center.

“We hire students all year long,” Berkowitz said. “There’s a group of about 10 or 12 youth that are working in a whole variety of initiatives throughout the year to address different community issues that affect the youth.”

Mayor Joe Curtatone spoke at the beginning of the stage show, and was followed by students performing various scenes, as well as giving personal anecdotes. Two kids acted out a scenario where the girl is trying to do her homework, while the boy wants her to smoke a joint with him. She refuses and says she is worried that he won’t pass his test. By the end, her concern breaks through to him, and he promises to pay more attention to his schoolwork.

Another skit featured a girl who had been impregnated by her boyfriend and kicked out of the house by her father. She told her boyfriend she expected him to bear some of the burden of raising the child, which she intended to keep. The boyfriend acted responsibly and promised to be there for his girlfriend, as well as their expected child. Most of the stories ended on similarly positive notes.

A highlight was the performance by Kourtney-Shea Yurko and Saladin Islam, both high school graduates. Islam played guitar while Yurko sang her heart out. Islam was the youth coordinator at Groundwork Somerville last summer, Berkowitz said.

Berkowitz said she does not know what is in store for next year’s conference, other than that it will be happening.

“The youth that we hire over the summer and the fall will have input into what [next year’s] event looks like,” she said. “Also, the Somerville Youth Workers Network plays a part in working together to figure out exactly what the format will be each year. So far all of the youth conferences have included an original stage show like the one that we just had, and sometimes it’s during the day time, sometimes it’s been at night, sometimes it’s included workshops and all different kinds of things. It all just depends on what the planners next year decide.”

Mayor Joe Curtatone spoke at this year’s Youth Peace Conference.

Anthony Soto.

Kayla Cameron.

Appreciative audience members.

Kayla Cameron and Nicole Carney.

Jonathan Mendoza.

Oscarline Leneus.

— Photos by Jack Adams