Global Youth Service Day Project 3/4/11

College Mentors lead a team of high school students in planning

water related service projects that will become part of Global

Youth Service Day (April 2011)

Right off the bat, on the first day I realized that I was paired with a group of four girls that were very bright and dedicated to their schooling. Not only were they ready to get started, but their ideas of getting everyone involved impressed me very much.  

These girls are working on recycling awareness and are creating a Water Bottle Challenge for their entire school to take part in. Not only will the school have a chance to recycle, but they will also have the opportunity on Global Youth Service Day to paint and decorate the water bottles. These bottles are going to be made into a structure resembling a tree, which will be located in the school court yard. They have plans to make an educational plaque for the community members who pass by. This week they are proposing to the Dean of their school to have the O.K. for the challenge and the placement of the water bottle structure. This bright and talented team did a great job putting their heads together to get the entire school involved!

-Kelly Crowley

While it has been a while since I have talked to you, the St Joan Antida groups are making huge steps in defining their project. With the group I was designated to mentor throughout the semester, we finally started putting together our “final” project description. The group of ladies I am helping with came up with a great idea of promoting hygiene products and how it affects the water system as well as the human skin/hair. In other words, we are going to make shampoo, conditioner, and a bar of soap to form a hygiene kit that would help lessen the pollution into our water. After making our products we will then store the conditioner and shampoo in sample bottles that would come from recycled material or green products. When all the sample bottles are filled (approx. 50 of each) we will be handing them out to many of the volunteers that are working the week of the Youth Global Day.

While the main focus in our group is creating hair products that are organic to help the water system, the group also believed they would promote their products as well as giving them away as samples. Many of the girls wanted to make posters, create a facebook group, and give away other samples to some of their peers at school. By being able to define our product more clearly, it has made the group more focused and able to see the end result. Also, our project has its outline, now we are just waiting for all the ingredients we will need to create our “kit.” While I am not sure, how the products will turn out or who will want to be our guinea pig to try out the product, but I am sure the girls are very excited about their creation and are ready to start telling people about it.

-Lucas White

This past week, the class at the school had a career day field trip, so we did not meet at Saint Joan Antida, however, I did get their contact information and will make sure to use facebook as a means to communicate with each girl. Tomorrow, we will fill out our budget request form and figure out the supplies needed and their costs for our rain garden project. I have made contact with Dave from Groundwork Milwaukee and he has some great questions to propose for my girls. Things such as: How big of a rain garden are you thinking of? How big is the area that would be draining to it? Are you thinking of taking on a larger project that involves replacing existing soil with "engineered soil"? How long do we have to plan for it? How much time to you have to put into this project?

These are all things I do need to either go over again or bring up tomorrow when I meet with the group. We have a ton of work to do, but it will be worth it!

-Mary Jane Kunath

At The School for Urban Planning and Architecture (SUPAR), a group of students involved in Lead to Succeed have been learning all about how clean water leads to healthy lives. The students were given a task earlier in the year to plan out and follow through with a project to present and construct at Global Youth Service Day this April 15-17, 2011. These students came up with a great idea of presenting an outdoor classroom alongside the Kinnickinnic River. The team has divided into four groups consisting of: a mural group, a bench/sitting area group, a native plant group, and a podium/plaque group; in which Petra Duecker (Facilitator and Account Manager for the project), Claire Fieber of 16^th Street Community Center (another mentor for the project), and myself will give them guidance and help them to stay on track with the project.

Each group has the responsibility to research the costs of the materials, contact the group in charge of funding their project, and to create a reasonable timeline in order to accomplish their mission. Although the students have huge visions and expectations for this project, the hard part is for the students to put their great ideas onto a solid and realistic plan so they have time to finish everything on time. So far, everything has been going very well. I just met with Evan McDoniels from 16th Street Community Health Center, Petra Duecker, and Kristin Kurzka of the SIGMA Group to discuss the project and set future goals in order to help the students stay on track with this project. We discussed where the classroom will be located, what types of materials we can and cannot use, and how much time and money this will take in order to be completed. This project is definitely something the students will feel good about once finished knowing they did a part in helping their community.

-Abby Breitenfeldt

Youth Volunteerism Campaign with the Boys and Girls Club:

This week we had our first meeting with the Mary Ryan Boys and Girls Club, which was more of an orientation and getting to know the very basics of the project.  The students seemed to be a very energetic group and I cannot wait to see what type of creative ideas they have in store for us.  

We presented the idea of how we will be learning about the importance of volunteerism and later the students will take all the information they’ve learned and put it together in a presentation to their peers.  As with the Financial Literacy project, we are leaving a lot of the decisions up to the students while we stand back and guide them through each meeting.  I look forward to getting deeper into the project and hearing all the feedback from the students.

-Chelsee Bates

It finally came; after two weeks of waiting because of the big snow storm, the Boys and Girls Club got underway.  For our first Monday night gathering the group was introduced to the adult leaders, mentors, and helpers that would be involved in their development of volunteerism. The night started off with an ice breaker that allowed the teens to get a couple quick laughs before settling down and getting the project started. The group was asked many questions about volunteer work to begin brainstorming. With some of the questions asked, I was able to find out which teens have volunteered before, where they have volunteered at, what makes them want to volunteer, and how excited each teen was to be able to have an opportunity to help others.

In our second meeting we began by dividing into three different groups and creating a commercial to promote volunteer work. With the teens knowing their main project for this semester was to create a presentation not only about volunteer work but also to promote volunteerism to other youth in the community; this was a great exercise for the teens to brainstorm their ideas. In my group we started off listing characteristics that would make a great commercial such as; entertaining, knowledgeable, color schemes, etc. to make sure that it would be meaningful to the other two groups we would be presenting too. By knowing what makes a good commercial, the group and I then began to brainstorm some benefits from volunteering that we could incorporate into our commercial. After presenting our commercial to the other two groups and the other two groups presenting theirs to us, I, along with the other mentor Chelsee led a group discussion about what questions might be asked before volunteering. To end the night, Laketta, Shannon, Laura, Chelsee, and I evaluated the next two weeks by creating agenda for next Monday and starting to get the project guide filled out so we can begin to share ideas with the group of what their presentation should be about.

-Lucas White

Custom Rain Barrel Business Project with Neulife

Monday, February 21, 2011

We have had a productive first couple of weeks working at Neu-Life!  The business team began its work on designing the small business model that we will run our business on.  We also worked on and completed the rough draft of our project guide.  There are many issues and tasks that we need to overcome and complete, such as figuring out the small business program on the AgPlan.com website, completing the business plan, and presenting our finished product to the rest of the team.  We are excited to conquer these tasks and move on to the next phase of the project which will be actually getting the rain barrel business off the ground.  Oh, and on a final note, we have come up with our business name… “Make It Rain Barrels!”

-Bryce McCourt

Global Youth Service Day With St. Joan Antida

Last Thursday I got to meet with my group of girls from St. Joan Antida High School.  It was a rush of emotions; it was overwhelming yet exciting.  For Global Youth Service Day, my group of seven students decided to make a rain garden to be installed in front of their school.  They had a great power point demonstrating the importance of water conservation as well as making the school look beautiful. With my group, I can see what the upcoming challenges are: organization, motivation, delegation, and implantation.  I gave each student a to-do list and will meet with them tomorrow for follow up on those tasks. Details like budget, type of plants to use and where to purchase them, when to plant, and most important, where to plant, are all items we need to consider.

In addition to meeting with the girls, I met with Karin Gratz, Director of Lead to Succeed.  She had many great ideas for getting started on the rain garden and will also be helpful in getting both the money to finance the project as well assisting in getting supplies donated.  I look forward to meeting Bill Malone, from the Department of City Development, as well to assist in this endeavor.

-Mary Jane Kunath

To begin our session, the entire group of students went to the library where they were separated into their groups they did research with last semester. Once they were divided into their research groups, I was in charge of mentoring a group of six girls where we discussed many key issues of water and how certain things, such as pollution, affect the water industry.

After continuing to answer many questions in their project guide, the group of girls then proposed their idea of what they would like to present on Global Youth Service Day.  My group is very interested in hair products and the effects of chemicals or other harmful solutions that are rinsed down the drain while people shower. In fact, through their research, the girls were able to find a shampoo product that harms the water less than all other shampoo products-making it easier to recycle the water with less effort and steps. While they weren’t exactly sure how they wanted to present this experiment, the shampoo product was their main interest and would be able to define their presentation, with the continuation of research.

-Lucas White

Financial Literacy Project with SUPAR

Monday, February 14, 2011

Yesterday, February 9th, we had the first Financial Literacy meeting with the SUPAR students after our long winter break.  While the mentors were off from school, the students were still having sessions but learning other things like how to fill out a resume' and hearing a few guest speakers.  Now that we are in the project phase, Rachel (mentor), Petra (facilitator) and I really need to get the students focused in on what they want to present, how they want to present it and who they want to present it to.  During the meeting we made great progress in the students’ plan to target their presentation to peers and in the way they believe will be most effective.  The students decided that using the internet as a networking tool will be a great way to reach out to many people with one popular source.  I am confident in our small group’s ability to put their greatest efforts into an excellent final project.  

-Chelsee Bates

I am currently working as a college mentor on a financial literacy project at SUPAR High School in Milwaukee. Last semester's focus with the teens was research-based, focusing on what is most important for youth to know as they enter adulthood. It has been a spectacular experience with the kids. They are all very intelligent and good-natured, which has created a wonderful experience for me.

If I had been asked a few months ago what I thought about working with teenagers, I would have suppressed a strong sense of disdain, but I have come full circle as I have realized that I thoroughly enjoy what I am doing and hope to create a career based around teens. While there are still some bumps in the road, this program, thus far, has truly been a breath of fresh air.-Rachel Schwarz

Custom Rain Barrel Business Project with High School of the Arts

As the lead to Succeed students continue to work on their projects, I would like to make sure that you are informed of what they are accomplishing. Because this week was the first session with two new college mentors, we did a lot of introductions. The students showed us their power point explaining how much research they put into the rain barrel project last semester.  The group of high school students that we are working with seem very devoted to the program and project and are an artistic group and  very excited to enter the hands-on part and to actually making the rain barrels.

-Codee Sigler

Lead to Succeed Calendar

Monday, January 24, 2011

Our Lead to Succeed Calendar shows you:

• Every Project's Weekly Session
• Special LTS Events
• Community Partner Visits
• When to Look for New Blog Postings from your LTS Mentors

Check it out at :
http://www.brownbearsw.com/freecal/ltsmilwaukee