By Blake Deshazo

The Selma Times-Journal

Project Alpha is trying to make a difference in the community by teaching young men how to live a better life.

Wallace Community College Selma hosted a conference Friday for high school students designed to teach responsibility.

“We wanted to take this time to speak to these young men and show them that we care,” said Warren Billy Young, president of the Alpha Phi Alpha Chapter. “We have been where they are, so we are trying to make an impact on our community and save our children.”

Nearly 100 young men from the public high schools in Selma and Dallas County attended the conference, and they learned about a variety of topics that Project Alpha hopes benefits them in the future.

“I learned about responsibility, fatherhood and making the right choices and decisions,” said Billy Cox, a freshmen at Dallas County High School.

“I don’t hear stuff like that on a day-to-day basis, and they are keeping it real with us.”

Cox said he took the message delivered to him from speakers like Selma Police Chief William Riley to heart and will pass it on to others.

“Everything they told us we can pass on to our friends, and then they can pass it on to their friends,” Cox said. “I knew it would be an educational experience that would benefit me in the future.”

Young said he hopes the young men that attended the event will help spread the word and get young men to start taking responsibility.

“Once they get to a certain point it is their responsibility to train someone else younger than them,” Young said. “We are trying to do this thing one young man at a time.”

While lessons of responsibility, respect and education were instilled in the minds of the young men at the conference, Freeman Waller, former Dallas County assistant superintendent, said he wants them to take away one thing.

“What we really want to do is get kids to think,” Waller said. “For every one choice, there are a multitude of consequences, so we are trying to teach our young people how to think and make good choices.

“If we were to teach our young men how to think, then everything else will fall into place.”

Project Alpha is a national program that has been around since 1980.