Youth Empowered

I began by seeking the support of an organization I first particiapted in at the youth level: The California Organization for Public Safety (COPS). After writing a proposal letter to their board of directors requesting their organization's assistance as a fiscal sponsor. Once COPS approved my request and took on my program as part of their 'family' I began seeking out fellow fitness oriented adults who would make outstanding role models for youth in our program. I have now formed a team of 5 professional athletes and several adult community members who are passionate about youth outreach and excited to work hands on with the youth in our program. With our leaders in place we are now ready to get started working hands-on with the youth. We are currently organizing 8 week fitness sessions in which youth will meet as a group for a workout followed by a healthy snack and a review of some important healthy living key points. Since we want to get started as soon as possible we are starting now with minimal equiptment as we don't have any outside funding yet. Currently all of our leaders are volunteering their time and efforts (and equiptment) but I do hope that in time and with funding we can provide program equiptment that can be specific to our program and not personal items our volunteer are sharing. While funding is my primary focus at the moment our leaders are actively getting out in the community and talking to youths and their parents about our program. Because we are all excited to get started with the hands-on part of the program we've chosen to begin by offering open community workouts. We feel this will not only make our program more visible in the community but also give youthan opportunity to get to know our leaders, what we're about and connect with other youths in the program. So far our open workouts have proven to be a huge success. The youths invovled leave each workout begging for more workouts and more time with our leaders - this alone shows the great potential our program has to get through to these kids and truly make a lasting difference. Open workouts will continue until funding is in place that we can run an 8 week session more focused on healthy living and nutrition. We already have several curriculums in place to teach nutrition to a variety of school aged youth. Each curriculum differs a bit as it is formed to be age appropriate for whichever age group it is geared towards. The educational information and knowledge becomes more indepth and informative as the youths get older and/or more invovled in the program. Also through our open workouts we've began forming a team of YOUTH leaders. These are the youths that stand out among the rest and naturally take the initiative to step-up and help other participants who may be sturggling or need extra help. We would like to identify our youth leaders in a special way and continue encouraging their leadership both within our program and in their daily lives. Eventually we'd love to see young youths in the program grown to become youth leaders and with that eventually leaders in the community. We have many hopes and goals for our program but for now our primary focus is to get our youths DOING SOMETHING. We have chosen fitness as our route but we don't believe fitness has to be the activity. Any type of activity can really provide these kids with the support they need, the important factors are youth involvement and having positive and consistent adult role-models.