“That sort of broke my heart a little,” Chansavang said. “If it weren’t for the church, I don’t know where I would be. I was pretty much lost.”

It just so happened that he was exactly the kind of leader to solve exactly that kind of problem.

He’s working with church leaders at Holy Family of Jesus Cambodian Episcopal Church now to revive the group. He’s also spending part of the summer as a camp counselor at Lister Elementary for the Northwest Leadership Foundation.

“Now I know I’m supposed to be here,” said Chansavang, a Lincoln High graduate. “I know I’m doing something good for the church, for the community.”

Chansavang is one of 12 Act Six scholars who graduated in May from Whitworth College. They were the first graduates of the Northwest Leadership Foundation initiative, which in 2003 started giving full tuition scholarships to the Spokane college to young leaders from the Tacoma area.

Act Six has lofty goals.

Director Tim Herron doesn’t just want to transform motivated teens into college graduates.

It’s “not just to help them get their degrees, but to really transform the city,” Herron said. “Our vision is really to inspire them to care about their community.”

Although they aren’t required to return home after graduation, Herron hopes they will.

Most of the dozen are back in the Tacoma area, looking for jobs.

“I plan on staying in Tacoma,” said communications major Holy Chea, who went to Henry Foss High School. “It has made me value Tacoma even more. It made me have a passion for this city.”

STICKING TOGETHER

Herron was a math teacher at Lincoln in the early 2000s when he noticed some of his best students weren’t getting through college.

“We had these great, promising students that we were sending off, and they were just not making it,” Herron said.

So he started Act Six, based on a philosophy articulated by the Posse Foundation nearly 20 years ago on the East Coast.

The idea is that if students have preparation and each other, they’re more likely to make it.

Act Six takes its name from the Bible’s Book of Acts, in which the church responded to inequality in food distribution by selecting a cadre of leaders and empowering them to help solve the problem.

The initiative has a simple strategy of recruiting cadres of about 10 students, who already are promising leaders, during their senior year of high school.

They meet each week during their senior year of high school and talk about everything from study skills and time management to race relations and community development. They visit their college campus twice. They do a couple of retreats, even climbing a 9,000-foot mountain together.

Then, in teams, they go to faith-based colleges.

Whitworth College in Spokane has been the only college so far, but that will change.

This fall, Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland will accept six Act Six scholars who will start college in 2008. The following year, Northwest University in Kirkland will join. The program already has affiliates in Tennessee, Oregon and Alaska.

Although past students have been from the Tacoma area only, the program is expanding to include Seattle-area students.

Act Six leaders hope it grows.

“I hope a number of faith-based colleges will take a look at what’s going on,” associate director Kenneth Young said. “My vision is it does go across America.”

Forty of the 41 Act Six scholars from four cadres are still in school or just graduated.

All 11 members of the first cadre, as well as one member of the second, graduated in May with Bachelor of Arts degrees in subjects ranging from international studies to biology.

Act Six lost one student in the second cadre for academic reasons, so Herron knows the success rate won’t always be perfect, but he expects it to stay above 90 percent. That’s significantly better than the national statistics that show college graduation rates of black and Hispanic students at well under 50 percent.

Act Six students don’t need to be minorities or low-income or first-generation college students, but most are.

“We definitely have a bias toward students who are underrepresented on college campuses, and that comes in many forms, in race and income level and first generation,” Herron said. “But the main thing is we’re looking for kids who care about leadership and have a heart for their community and for being bridges.”

MAKING THEIR PLACE

Act Six isn’t good just for the students or their cities. The graduates helped transform a campus in need of diversity.

“Whitworth took a big risk,” Herron said. “It’s paid off beautifully.”

At Whitworth, where the noncaucasian enrollment in 2006-07 was 14.2 percent, Act Six students created new conversations about race, privilege and leadership.

They were leaders on their campus – which is exactly what Act Six told them to be.

One student, Rogers High School graduate Fa’ana Fanene, was elected president of the Associated Students of Whitworth College for the 2006-07 school year. Sha’Nay McQuirter, who went to Mount Tahoma High School, started the college’s first gospel choir, and grew it to 60 students, most of them singing gospel for the first time.

Delia Orosco, who went to Foss, served homeless teens in downtown Spokane through Whitworth’s Street Kids Project.

Lauren Thompson, also a Foss student, organized the Black History Month exhibit for the campus in 2006. She became the secretary and then president of the Black Student Union. She also worked in the school’s admissions department, helping with diversity events.

Several students made a two-hour presentation in 2006 to the college faculty about how the college could improve the academic environment for under-represented students.

At first, Spokane was a culture shock, students said.

Bobby Walston, another Lincoln grad, said other students would say, “Oh, you’re black. Do you rap? Do you play basketball? Can you teach me how to dance?”

The students knew they had to be careful about how they reacted if they wanted to make real changes.

“You didn’t want to go in puffed up like ‘We’re Act Six and we’re here to save your campus,’” Thompson said.

By the end of their freshman year, the students had started to figure out where and how they could lead.

Chansavang said his talents were in the classroom, asking nearly nonstop questions.

Holy Chea lent his leadership skills to youth in Spokane, teaching hip-hop to kids at a dance studio.

Bobby Walston worked in admissions and in the residence hall, at the library and as a teaching assistant for a professor.

They made their place.

BIG INVESTMENT

The investment colleges make in Act Six isn’t small.

The six students PLU is planning to admit as the first cadre there will cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year.

Each student comes to school with whatever resources they can garner, and then the college pays the rest. At a minimum, their tuition is covered without any loans. Depending on a student’s need, the schools could also fund books, room, food and personal expenses.

About half the students have been Washington State Achievers, bringing $10,000-a-year scholarships from the Gates Foundation and College Success Foundation. About half of the students also have $4,000-a-year scholarships from the R. Merle Palmer Minority Scholarship Foundation.

Karl Stumo, vice president for admission and enrollment services at PLU, said he’s excited to join Act Six, both to serve students and to make the campus a better place.

“This program, I think, picks students one at a time and builds the capacity in each one of them to go out and change Tacoma, one person and one project at a time,” he said. “It might take some time to transform the city, but these kids can do that.”

Daniel Bacon, an Act Six and a Lincoln High graduate who’s working with Chansavang as a camp counselor, said knowing the other members of his cadre is a comfort.

“I know they’re out there,” said Bacon, who will work for AmeriCorps for the next two years on the Hilltop. “I know overall, they want to see the world change and the community change.”

How to apply

Act Six is recruiting up to 20 high school students from the Tacoma-Seattle area to enter college in the fall of 2008.

Applicants must be high school seniors planning to graduate in 2008 or who graduated in 2006 or 2007. Although Act Six will select an intentionally diverse group of scholars, students from all ethnic backgrounds and income levels are invited to apply.

Applications can be downloaded at www.actsix.org. Act Six can be reached at 253-272-0771.

The deadline is Oct. 5.

Karen Hucks: 253-597-8660

karen.hucks@thenewstribune.com

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