Youth Leadership Program
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On Wednesday, December 12, 2007, Valley United Way Youth
Leadership Program hosted the Valley’s first Middle School Community
Leadership Conference. The Conference was sponsored by
Pitney Bowes. Ninety-six middle school
Students from Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour & Shelton attended the full day
session held at Villa Bianca in Seymour.
United Way Youth Leadership members planned and facilitated the conference as a way to help inspire and educate middle school students to be volunteer leaders in their communities. The 2006 Youth Leaders started the planning with a weekend retreat at Camp Jewell on January 12- 14, 2007. Since that time, many Youth Leaders have graduated and gone on to college and the incoming group from April 2007 accepted the challenge to make the Conference a reality. All of these Youth Leaders feel strongly that this opportunity to meet with the middle school students will help them build their leadership skills, emphasize the importance of volunteering in the community and strengthen the bridge between middle school and high school youth.
Melissa Pucci, a member of United Way's Board of Directors, was the Keynote speaker, and she spoke about her earlier volunteer involvement when she was in high school and her early involvement with United Way's High School Volunteer Council. She used a story about "stone soup" to illustrate the importance of a community of volunteers and the difference they could make.
During the course of the day, United Way Youth Leaders facilitated breakout groups for training and motivation leading to each of the school groups developing volunteer projects to take back to their schools for the new year.
In January 2008, the Youth Leadership Program will begin accepting applications for the incoming group. Please visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org or call Pat Tarasovic at 203 926-9478.
The Youth Leadership Program is made possible through the generous support of the Raymond P. Lavietes Foundation which provides core funding.
