National Youth Leadership Training Addresses Achievement Gap

Since its inception 25 years ago as an intensive summer experience in
diversity training and service-learning for high school youth, The
National Youth Leadership Training has developed into a life-changing
week of adventure, self-discovery, friendship, cultural exchange,
leadership-building, and service.

This summer 41 young people from around the nation gathered at Voyager Environmental Center in Mound, Minn. the week of July 20th. Participants went through a series of seminars, experiential activities and reflections designed to develop their skills to recognize and work past barriers in their lives and communities. New this year was a theme: the achievement gap, and — with support from the State Farm® Youth Advisory Board — service-learning mini-grant opportunities for NYLT participants.

“This [leadership] training is different from other [leadership] trainings because you actually are put in situations where you truly are a leader,” states senior YAC member Siddharth Damania. He explained that the experiential, hands-on education youth receive at NYLT, including team-building activities incorporating real life scenarios, is where youth leadership skills are honed.

These skills were given a test run later in the week when participants went on their Pursuits of Excellence, one-day service-learning projects with six partner organizations in the Twin Cities Metro area and one in Osceola, Wisc. Afterwards, they took part in reflection activities, including creatively presenting what they learned and how it may connect to their understanding of the achievement gap.

“It’s embodied in my soul that we were not only helping out, [but] we were doing justice,” Jeremiah Luckett shared during his group’s presentation, referring to an earlier conversation when “charity” and “justice” had been defined as “helping out” and “going to the root cause” respectively. His group had gone to the Bridging warehouse, where they loaded and unloaded donated furniture and household items into and from trucks. They agreed that the work they did was “justice” because they had provided basic needs to families — needs that left unmet may become root causes to larger life issues.

The conclusion of NYLT included a session when youth and their adult mentors brainstormed service-learning projects to address the achievement gap. Ideas included, for example, high school traveling computer labs, a study skills program for an elementary school, and a presentation to create awareness about the high teen pregnancy rate. These ideas will be formalized as proposals to NYLC’s Youth Advisory Council for mini-grant consideration. The YAC will then support these projects in their implementation, continuing the ripple effect of NYLT throughout the year and across the country.