About Me. Why YSG?

Greetings,

My name is Deara Okonkwo and I am an eighteen years old graduate student at the University of Southern California. I am also the founder of DeDe Dance Studio, a burgeoning non-profit in South, Los Angeles that works to empower youth through multicultural performing arts, brotherhood and sisterhood clubs. Many know me based on my accomplishment of obtaining my high school diploma with my Associate's of Arts Degree at 14 or because I graduated from the University of Southern California with my BA at the age of 17 or even because I founded a community and youth based organization for youth at the age of 14 and serve as a leader for young and old in my community. That all may be what people have known me for but even with all of that I am still learning myself. I want to learn more about myself and my full potential in life. What I have accomplished is worthy to be thankful to God for; however, I know that God has many more blessings in store for me. I have innumerable goals in life and because I have been blessed with so many talents at such a young age, I would like to learn more about myself so that I can be even better at all that I do.

For some weeks now, I have been thinking about spirituality in an atypical way. I was not necessarily thinking about my religion--that is Lutheran--instead I frequently pondered my inner being: my philosophy, morals, values, in essence my heart. I tried to compare that with my outer being: my presence, actions, accomplishments. I was not fully satisfied although I wanted to be gratified. I could not pinpoint the problem neither how exactly to solve it and this really agitated me. The knowing that I had certain values and morals in life combined with not knowing what was preventing me to walk the talk of those beliefs fully provoked me to start the Youth Spiritual Group (YSG).

YSG will launch in January of 2009; very soon! The purpose of the group would be to unite teens and young adults together in harmony to worship, meditate and share advice with each other. I am still gathering and fine-tuning my ideas for YSG but I need support and feedback of youth and adults to do so. I do not envision YSG to promote one particular denomination over another. Instead, I want the group to advocate the essence of interdependent spirituality, which from my perspective means living together in peace and harmony. Furthermore, to live in peace with someone you have to be in peace with yourself which goes back to 'walking the talk' or 'living the teaching'.

In essence, I want my mind to be clearer. I want to be able to speak and not regret that my my tongue spoke faster than my brain. I yearn to practice and be a firm believer of all that I support, endorse, perform etc. I want to say "Yes," and really mean it. I want to be able to say "No," without hesistation. I aspire to learn more about myself through my work with others and their advice for me will help me to be a better person.

This is what I intend for YSG. My ideas are still in the process of drafting thus I would appreciate constructive and tangible feedback.

Thank you for reading.