Link’s Youth Leadership Team
Over the past month, seven youth living in the Walnut Neighborhood have formed Link’s first Youth Leadership Team. Thanks to a grant awarded by the Waterloo Community Foundation, the team will focus on 3 main projects this year: The Birthday Box Project, Painted Yard Trees, and the team will work to learn about flourishing neighborhood indicators and offer their voices in the ongoing holistic development work going on in the neighborhood.
Link’s Youth Leadership Team has been working hard this fall to create a birthday survey, and youth pairs have been walking door to door in the neighborhood asking resident children if they are willing to take a birthday survey to share their birthdates and some of their favorites. Starting in January 2023, the Youth Leadership Team (YLT) will use grant money provided by the Waterloo Community Foundation to purchase items on the surveys and to make and deliver individualized birthday boxes to Walnut Neighborhood children and youth on their birthdays.
Goals for this Birthday Box Project include (1) developing leadership and communication skills in the Youth Leadership Team (2) Connecting youth with youth and helping them come to know one another by name in our neighborhood (3) Helping young people feel seen, heard, and celebrated in our neighborhood.
To date, 38 surveys have been conducted and collected. YLT members have done an outstanding job interviewing students throughout our neighborhood, asking them their favorite color, sports team, hobbies, whether they prefer chocolate or vanilla cake, and more. One YLT member, designed the birthday card that we’ve printed and will include in each child’s birthday box.
Who doesn’t like to talk about themselves, their favorites, and to discover they’ll receive a birthday gift from other neighborhood youth on their birthday in 2023? It has been a joy to get to know young people in the neighborhood and to watch their eyes light up when the focus is on them and their birthday. After a stop at one home, a YLT member mentioned how much she learned she had in common with the girl she had just interviewed. These two live just around the corner from one another, are only a year apart in age, and now know that they share a lot in common.
Youth Development has always been a top priority for Link CCD. The young people are incredible assets in our neighborhoods, and helping them to discover their passions and offer their gifts in community enriches everyone’s lives throughout the neighborhood and nurtures this next generation of leaders in the Cedar Valley.