Youth Leadership Completes Weekend Training

Members of the Valley United Way's Youth Leadership Program officially began their training for 1996 with an intensive weekend of training and team building at Camp Jewell, a YMCA camp located in Colebrook, Connecticut during the weekend of  April 19-21. Fourteen students and 4 chaperones spent the weekend getting to know each other in an intensive teen leadership program developed by the Hartford YMCA.

This is the Youth Leadership's seventh year of involvement in the program which is designed to teach the teens to draw on individual and team strengths to work on a variety of problem solving activites presented by a team of three training coordinators from the Y.

Students were challenged both physically and mentally throughout the weekend.From the moment the teens first arrived on Friday night until it was time to leave on Sunday, they came to learn more about each other and how they could build an effective problem solving team. They will eventually distribute nearly $4,000 in the Valley community to groups willing to work on problems that the students will have identified as most important to their age group.

On Friday night the students worked on a variety of exercises designed to help get them to know each other as most of the students did not know each other before being selected for the program. They come from public and private high schools throughout the area. As part of the activity, they used magazine clippings to help explain where they are at this moment in their lives and where they would like to be in five or ten years.

Saturday was a full day marked by a series of trust building exercises, problem solving challenges, and the always challenging "Mt. Wood" climb (see picture at right). After spending the day learing to work together, the students held their first offical meeting at night and elected their 1996 officers headed by President Gina Rochelle of Seymour.

Mt. Wood looked fairly easy compared to the challenge facing the students on Sunday when they had to face the prospect of climbing a 30 foot rope ladder before free falling to an exhilirating finish on the "Super Swing." Even with a very elaborate safety system of harnesses and ropes, it took a lot of courage to jump from a tiny platform mounted far off the ground on the limb of an old oak tree.

In addition to all the students, Valley United Way wants to thank chaperons Barbara & John Shegg and Lynn Fontana for their work with the students throughout the weekend.

Valley United Way