At Tribe One, keeping Knoxville's youth out of jail and preventing them from being murdered on the street is the first step to spiritual and economic empowerment.

For ten years we have been addressing their challenges: poverty, racism, and powerlessness. Our success speaks for itself; many of those we have served are mentors to the next generation of at-risk youth. Some are trained as mediators in juvenile court. They speak as experts on meeting facilitation, dispute resolution, and community activism throughout the city and have become a positive force for change in our community.

Only through such empowerment can each young person become part of a shared reality of social justice.

It's change from within...from the inside--within themselves and within their neighborhood--to the outward. Often, we find anger, fear and pain within ourselves. But using those poisons as the cure--believing that only the person can change themselves from the inside out, we support these young people, expecting in them even more significant change to come, claiming the words of Cicero as a banner, "The cure is in the poison."