Youth Leadership Opportunities
Community Partnership supports the America’s Promise Alliance 5 Promises initiative, and we know that our youth involvement and leadership programming helps provide the students with the Promises of Opportunities to Serve Others, Caring Adults, and Effective Education.
As a coalition specializing in the building of healthy, resilient and successful youth, we recognize that youth must be at the table. Frequently, it is the youth themselves that come up with some of our best marketing tools, and it is their knowledge of "what’s cool,” “what’s in,” “what’s really going on” that guides us as we develop prevention materials, educational tools, and youth – centered programming. That is as it should be.
Community Partnership offers many opportunities for youth of all ages to become involved in their community. Some of these, such as youth membership on our Ozarks Fighting Back Advisory Board, are by invitation only and are limited to a very few. Others, such as our annual Community Wide Play Day, offer even young children the opportunity to assist pre-schoolers in taking advantage of low-cost play activities designed to encourage early brain development. In many of the communities we work with, we assist young people with clubs designed to prevent alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse as well as to engage them in service learning and leadership opportunities.
In some of our schools, a formal leadership curriculum for middle school students is part of the programming. Several of our clubs devote extensive time to giving back to the community, and we recognize this builds character, helps them feel valued by the community, and assists them in building leadership skills. Summer service learning classes are also available in some of the areas we serve.
Click HERE for information on cityELEMENTS, a Springfield/Greene County high school student group whose goal is to increase youth involvement in the community.