San Francisco Educator Works to Keep Young People 'Alive and Free

And that's the VOA Special English . I'm Steve Ember.

JOE MARSHALL: "I got a lot of horror stories and a lot of my former students ended up dead or in prison for selling drugs, being involved in gangs, girls ended up getting pregnant."

JOE MARSHALL: "It is my Marlena!"

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JOE MARSHALL: "I want to build an institution. I'm not going to be here forever, so my big thing is to make sure this goes on."

Joe Marshall co-founded the Omega Boys Club in San Francisco, California, twenty-three years ago. Mr. Marshall tries to give boys -- and girls -- a safe refuge and a chance at a better future.

Every week, he has two basic messages for his young students: "Stop the violence" and "Don't do drugs."

Mr. Marshall spent twenty-five years as a teacher and administrator in San Francisco. He taught math in middle school and expected to see his best students go to college.

In many ways, it serves as a kind of family. It provides teenagers with structure and support.

The club provides guidance and financial assistance to help students stay in school. Over ninety percent of members who were accepted into college have graduated.

More than half of young black men in the United States do not finish high school. Many grow up without fathers and in neighborhoods with gangs, drugs and violence. Sixty percent of those who drop out of school have spent time in jail by the age of thirty-five.

In nineteen ninety-one, Joe Marshall started "Street Soldiers," a weekly call-in show.

Joe Marshall has a doctorate in psychology. He sees gangs and violence as a disease that needs to be dealt with as a public health problem.

MARLENA: "Yes Doctor Marshall, this is Marlena!"

The club represents the headquarters of what he calls the "alive and free movement." But his most effective way to spread his anti-violence message is through radio.

The Omega Boys Club serves more than four hundred young people every year. Two times a week, it offers after-school classes in math, reading, family and life skills, and college preparation.

Twelve other American cities have copied the program. Joe Marshall has been invited to speak in Canada, Nigeria, South Africa and Thailand.