Youth Engaged in Service
"A foster care and adoption fair."–Youth Service America
At the Community Academy Public Charter School in a low-wealth area of Washington, DC, fourth grade students decided to apply for a Disney Minnie Grant administered by Youth Service America (YSA) to encourage younger children to develop highly visible projects for Global Youth Service Day. Projects are required to be youth-led, to address an important community problem, to connect directly to academic skills, to seek publicity from the media, and to engage elected officials.
The students came to their teacher Loree Lipstein with their plan, which they determined was going to be "fun" and involve putting on a community fair. Ms. Lipstein agreed that nobody would show up if it wasn't fun and that community fairs were good ways to bring the community to the school grounds. But, she reminded her students that the grant would never be funded unless it addressed a serious problem. She left them alone to make that determination on their own.
When the students returned with their decision to create a foster care and adoption fair, their teacher was stunned. "I had no idea about adoption or foster care when I was their age," she admitted, "and they are only nine years old!" But the students knew classmates that were in foster care, and they wanted to help.
On Global Youth Service Day in April, the school grounds were brightly decorated; clowns and television cameramen wandered through the food stands and game stations, and more than a dozen agencies that support adoption and foster care were on hand, with some 25 eligible children in tow.
When YSA's CEO arrived at the project, joined by a city council member and the District's Shadow Senator, Anya, one of the student leaders, took his hand to start the tour and enthusiastically reported, "We've already made four matches!" More were to be made by day's end.
In the project's evaluation and impact statement it was observed that students practiced their language arts skills to write business letters that invited the various agencies to their school, developed leadership and problem-solving skills in the planning and execution of the adoption fair, and learned about responsibility and teamwork.
