The DuBois Boys Club is a character-based project for boys 6 and up. The program strives to support the needs of boys through academic, recreational and social opportunities that build upon individual strengths and interests.The project works to inspire boys to become the “Talented Tenth” in their families, their schools, their churches, their communities and the world.  The project design is guided by the proclamation from W.E.B. DuBois, the acclaimed educator, sociologist, author, and first African American to graduate from Harvard with a Doctorate, Co-founder of the NAACP, co-founder of the Niagara Movement and social actives, who proclaimed in September, 1903 that:

 

“The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.

 

If this be true — and who can deny it — three tasks lay before me; first to show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly to show how these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly to show their relation to the Negro problem.”   

 

The program meets weekly during the academic school year, and for six weeks during the summer break. The primary goal of the program is to build resilient, brilliant, confident, moral and healthy boys The expected outcomes are that these boys will use these foundations to make sound and wise decisions and choices that leads the best quality of life possible.  Along with the strong emphasis toward academic excellence, club members  are given supports to improve interpersonal communications skills, develop a healthy self-concept, fostering concepts of brotherhood and teamwork, igniting intellectual curiosity, and cultivating their awareness and appreciation of their culture and other diverse cultures. The project, utilizes a “Youth Voice and Choice" perspective affording boys an opportunity to participate in the planning process, to ensure that their needs and concerns are being appropriately addressed.