As I stood there at the Youth Venture celebration, it dawned on me how the last 13 Saturdays became a blur. A deeper introspection helped me realize how lucky I was to see these teenagers grew and dare I say blossom into change makers. Each of those teens receiving recognition put in the effort to develop a plan to make part of their world a better place.
What adds to the accomplishment of these teens is that they spent Saturday mornings learning and practicing the skills necessary to create change. Think back to your teenage years or even think about the teenagers you know right now. How many of the would be willing to give a Saturday morning to do anything that resembles learning?
During the course of 13 weeks, these teenage changemakers learned everything from budgeting to public speaking and two of those lessons stuck out in my mind. The first was National Day of Giving. To commemorate that day, the change makers were given flowers and asked to created cards for those flowers. The next step was the easy part, go out on the street and give away the flowers and ask for nothing in return. This became one of the most difficult challenges each change maker encountered. The resistance to this act of kindness was faced with doubters, disbelievers, and other forms of skepticism. This taught the change makes an important lesson. If people were resistant to getting something for free, how would these change makers convince the same people to help them make a small part of the world better?
The other lesson that I believe to be the most valuable was that high ropes course. All of the change makers had not experience the challenge of walking on steel cables placed 40 feet in the air. Before they even started walking they were prepared with the knowledge of safety equipment and someone on the ground providing support. This seemingly innocuous act of walking across a high wire provided the teens the confidence to know that they can overcome fears and that they have a support system in place that wants to see them succeed.
Written by Ameet Purohit, Coach for the YV Dream it. Do it. Challenge—DC Fall 2009
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