While we present many words below, the few short video clips offered above quickly show what adults and parents want to know about the YCLC. Take it now, and you will understand WHY we are passing it on to other communities, as is explained below.
This Web Site was constructed to bring the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge to a wide audience - to the youth it serves, to adults who are looking for ways to empower youth to be the best they can be and to communities who are looking for new ways to serve their youth. In the developmental years (1999-2005) we, as the Leaders-of-Tomorrow Institute, undertook to find the youth, locate the volunteers, secure donors - to learn what would be required. Having completed this phase, our mission going forward from 2005 is to provide the program and Facilitators who have been trained to ensure that it meets the vigorous standards we have set - to communities who want a program which they can mount on their own steam - with the youth they want to bring and the volunteers they want to involve.
If
you are a member of such a community, if you are looking for an
effective way to empower the youth of your community, you have come to
the right place. If you find that what is currently available to the
youth of your community is leaving your youth less than prepared for
the adolescent years, here is something new to consider. We have
carefully constructed it so that youth engage in challenges which bring
up the issues they are wrestling with in everyday life - bullying,
victimization, lack of motivation, social isolation. At the
Young Canadian Leadership Challenge they
find their own answers to these thorny issues - and they are
surprisingly mature and admirable answers. Here they begin to look
after each other with compassion and understanding. Here there are no
them and us - we're all in this together - and we'll all make it or
none of us will.This program could be offered at the beginning of a school year, as an opening act of a summer camp, as the introduction to a sports organization's activities, as a way of gathering the youth in a community which has experienced tragedy related to youth, as the contribution of a church, synagogue or mosque to community unity. All that it requires is that it be open to all, regardless of background - to youth in trouble, youth-at-risk, disabled youth, youth struggling at school - and to the kid next door.
This is not the only program of this type. It is one of a new breed of programs which focuses on youth empowering each other. Youth love it and it works for them. They take something away which is immediately useful to them in their own lives. So the program continues in their everyday lives and grows in effectiveness in the months and years afterwards. Reed W. Larson has described such programs in his article, Towards a Theory of Positive Youth Development, published in 2000 and available as a download HERE. Our contribution has been to wrap the best of what Larson's sources have found into a package which a community can undertake on its own steam without the requirement of waiting until government provides the funding. While there is a cost, it is not one which a few well-motivated individuals could not assemble in short order. In short, it puts the community-at-large in the driver's seat. The question becomes whether you or a group of people you know are the kind of people who are prepared to step into the driver's seat. Have a look and see!
VIDEO TOUR for adults: Dial-up Modem (28.8-56K) or High Speed Internet (> 56k)