About Us
The New ADAGE (Alternatives For Drug And Gang Elimination) Youth Development Program, founded in 1986 and incorporated in 1992, is a teacher-created and teacher-staffed (501) (c) (3) nonprofit organization that operated for twenty-fourth years out of its home base at John Muir Middle School in South Central L. A.
A team of seventy-five LAUSD staff members, parents, and volunteers operated the most successful academic related interscholastic sports program in the history of Los Angeles by involving 2,000 youths annually from seventeen participating middle schools for sixteen consecutive years of competition without one incident of violence or crime by any of its student participants!
In addition to seventeen schools in our sports league, our total programs consisted of several ever-growing clubs: Mock Trial Team, Modeling & Charm, Drill Team, Cheerleading, Drama, Dance, Ballet, Tap Dancing, Chorus, Key Boarding, Drum Corp, Clown Club, Robotic Club, and soon many different tech-centered clubs.
The sports aspect of New ADAGE was funded entirely by the Amateur Athletic Foundation, now L.A. ’84 Foundation. This highly successful moral mission did not cost LAUSD one dime! Most notable is the fact that not one New ADAGE student was killed during the sixteen years of operation. (See L.A. Times article)
For 2015 and beyond, our mission is to permanently return New ADAGE to its original heights by purchasing and owning land and facilities so that to never again be shut out of operation due to a local school district’s decision to maintain exclusive use of its fields and facilities, leaving charter schools out entirely.
Our team of educators will treat the whole child – physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and academically to ensure that each student participant have the tools to compete for jobs in this ever expanding 21st Century global society.