A life process preparing students for a future of success and excellence. The Rising Stars Process was designed to help today's youth develop their personal leadership skills. Leadership is essential in enabling youth to develop character, confidence, and values that promote the goal of healthy behavior.

Educators, parents, government officials, and business people have all realized the importance of helping our youth develop their personal leadership skills. Empowered youth grow up feeling confident with themselves and with their ability to achieve goals.

Rising Stars is in part based on recognizing the Search Institute's forty developmental assets, experiences, opportunities, and internal capacities essential for health and success in our complex society. Search Institute is an independent, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose mission is to advance the well being of adolescents and children by generating knowledge and promoting its application. Search Institute and Rising Stars believe if our society would invest more in positive attributes young people need, then we could expect high yields (in terms of healthier youth) as young people become healthy, contributing members of families, communities, workplaces, and society.

The Rising Stars process is an innovative and unique inside-out development process that focuses on three critical elements that promote personal leadership, healthy behaviors, and the skills employers identify as essential. These elements are: developing attitudes, developing interpersonal skills, and developing goal-achievement skills. The development process typically begins by developing positive attitudes among the participants about themselves and about the possibilities that exist for them. Attitudes will directly determine in many cases whether a student turns a problem into an opportunity or succumbs to it; whether they behave in healthy ways that benefit from the educational process. Goal achieving and interpersonal skills then enhance their ability to assess the impact of their present behavior on their present and future success.

The process has been field tested in an urban comprehensive high school, a middle school, a non-public special education program, a church youth club, and a community based program for adjudicated youth.

The Rising Stars process contains the innovative learning methods of: self-directed learning where students take responsibility for their own personal improvement; constructivism, where facilitation recognizes how to shorten the learning curve; and collaborative/team learning activities that support educational research. Developing personal leadership is a critical component to bringing today's youth into society and the workforce as healthy, productive contributors. Rising Stars proven process instills these behaviors along with an additional return on investment through prevention and reduction of risk behavior.

For further information, visit the Rising Stars website.