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Life PAC

Youth living Positive lives in Action and in Character.

We speak with youth about how important it is for them to learn different characteristic and how to apply it to their lives. This will help them to become a vital part of their school, church, family, and community. Once this applied to their lives, it is our hope that it will spread to other because of the changes they made in their lives.

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Purpose Statement:

The young ladies of Virtuous Destiny will be empowered to become moral excellent as they enter a place to which they are destined.

Mission:

Through positive mentoring, teaching and tutoring young ladies will develop positive esteem about themselves and acquire the necessary skills needed to become a virtuous young lady and reach their individual destiny.

Young ladies of Virtuous Destiny will learn to be:

Poised: with proper posture, walking, sitting communication and demeanor.

Polished: young ladies will acquire esteem, proper grooming techniques (skin, nail and hair) and attire.

Polite: manners, dining skills, grammar and proper salutations.

Good Citizenship: learning positive character traits.

Academic Success: tutoring and encouragement.

Vision:

The vision of Virtuous Destiny is to empower young ladies for success in every area of their lives; through teaching and positive leadership young ladies will be encouraged to fly beyond life obstacles virtuously and reach their destiny.

Program Requirements:

*Ages 12-18

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Hang TYMERS (Teaching Youth Math Enrichment and Reading after School) is an after school program for at-risk children created by college volunteers from the University of Alabama. The program focuses on reading and mathematical mastery through one-on-one mentoring. In the beginning, sixth grade students are paired with a college mentor. This mentor serves as a role model, teacher, and friend. The idea behind the program is to challenge disadvantage children to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Throughout the program, middle school students set short-term and long-term goals and create a plan to reach those goals. This year students will also use math, language arts, social studies, and science to answer real-world problems. Not only do the students gain academic mastery, they grow socially and emotionally with their mentor. The mentors work once a week for two hours in the school and gain knowledge and experience that can not be measured. The program has grown and helped children learn to love school and feel comfortable achieving success.

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Two issues will be addressed with starting a Kinross Recreation Center Youth Volunteer Council: youth with few productive activity options and a community that has many needs that are not being attended to. The town of Kinross and the surrounding areas are rural, have substantial poverty among families, and house four of Michigan’s prisons. The combination of these aspects makes the community less than appealing for many of its youth inhabitants. Some of the youth even have parents in the prisons. The Kinross Recreation is a place of hope for young children, teens, and adults. It boasts a large gym, a playground, tennis and basketball courts, a work-out facility, a computer lab, and at-costs enrichment classes for the community. Young children and adults find many activities at the Recreation Center to entertain themselves. Teens, however, who are too old to play games with the children and too young to use equipment in the work-out facility, are left with fewer options. Teens still frequent the Recreation Center, but staff has run into a problem with fights and other inappropriate behavior because of a lack of positive activities for the teens. For these reasons, the United Way Volunteer Center has identified the Kinross Recreation Center as an ideal location for a Youth Volunteer Council. As a result of service learning projects brought to the local high school by the United Way Volunteer Center, there is already interest in community service in the youth of Kinross. If the Volunteer Center acts now to cultivate this interest, the results will be great.
The United Way Volunteer Center has experience in founding youth volunteer
groups. Earlier this school year, a Youth Volunteer Council (YVC) was started at Sault High School, which is 25 miles north of Kinross. This group has been a great success; members complete monthly service projects in the community and volunteer with groups outside YVC. Projects that they have conducted include: fund-raisers, events for children at the local Boys & Girls Club, a homelessness awareness event, making valentines for and spending time with residents at senior citizen’s homes, mentoring children in elementary schools, and earth day clean-ups. Many of the members of this group received the Michigan Student Service Award, which is passed down from the governor of Michigan for completing a substantial amount of community service. Students who earned this award wrote reflective essays about their volunteer experiences and it was obvious through these essays that volunteering positively impacted their lives and their communities. This type of positive impact would be great everywhere, and Kinross is a model place to begin this expansion.
The Volunteer Center has already laid the groundwork for a relationship with the Kinross Recreation Center by coordinating a clean-up by youth volunteers and a Family Fun Day at the Recreation Center, also run by youth volunteers. The next step in building a Youth Volunteer Council will be to meet with the staff at the Recreation Center to discuss the best approach. Then the youth service representative from the Volunteer Center will hold a kick-off event such as a cook-out to get youth interested in joining the Youth Volunteer Council. Estimating from the interest during service learning projects, there will be a core group of 5-10 youth to begin this venture, and more youth will be recruited from the Recreation Center patrons and the community as a whole. As soon as the initial group of youth volunteers is formed, they will have a large role in the projects that they take on. They will identify community needs and then design projects to meet them. The youth service representative will facilitate meetings and handle finances for the group. This Volunteer Center Staff person is an AmeriCorps* VISTA who works specifically with at-risk youth. Her term of service will be over in November and a new VISTA will carry on with the plans for the Youth Volunteer Council.

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I started a community group of at risk children. We teach them about character building and Biblical principles. We want to broad their horizon with field trips. We instill community service and civic conscienceness. The group consists of children from k-8 school aged children. We complete each Wednesday night with a meal.