A growing number of cultural, educational, and social service programs around the United States report success in reducing teenage school drop-out rates, unemployment, substance abuse, and pregnancy. Facilitators of these programs claim that long-lasting impact requires not only informing young persons about the real dangers of such behavior, but also providing intellectual and emotional rewards in the form of a sense of hope instead of despair and a feeling of connection to some larger community ("Time", Nov. 14, 1994). These programs are thus designed to empower youth at a time of life transition--especially during the middle-school years (ages 11-14)--when they feel most vulnerable and are most "at risk." Such programs have been the focus of review by the Project on Culture and Communication (University at Albany, SUNY, New York) for the past year. The primary task has been to survey available cultural-communication empowerment programs and to develop relevant documents which are available to interested government agencies, educational institutions, and community groups. This report summarizes the Project's efforts to date, and also serves as a complement to a resource guide and a bibliography published by the Project. This report largely employs the words of key practitioners, researchers, community activists and government spokespersons in order to display the philosophy, the operationalization, and the assessment of cultural-communication empowerment programs. Contains 13 references. (Author)