Engaging Youth During Summer

Summer can be a challenging time for youth and families. Youth may be prevented from engaging in meaningful activities due to a lack of resources, availability, financial access, or a host of other challenges. 

During the One Circle Foundation facilitator support meeting in July, some of our partners shared creative ways that they continue to engage youth during the summer months. The ideas were too good not to share.

With the permission of both of our partners, we are pleased to make available the following ideas for engaging youth in meaningful activities.

“Over the summer, our team engages in a few things to keep in touch with our youth. We have a master list of families that we conduct home visits with twice a month. We bring them groceries from our local food bank and make sure they get supported in any of the issues that they are facing over the summer. Additionally, we schedule weekly 1:1 meetings with select youth, we meet them at their home and go on a “walk & talk” with them. During that time we talk about issues or conduct activities to help them in their development.” - Jett Stebbins, MSW, Empowerment Coordinator

“To continue meeting the needs of our participants and serve them during the Summer when school is out, we partnered with our city's parks and recreation department to reserve local parks for us to host a monthly summer Girls' Circle. These events allowed our girls to connect over the summer break and explore nature in our own city. We partnered with various organizations so our girls could have books for their home libraries, popsicles and ice cream, guest speakers, etc. We even partnered with Reynold Gardens for our girls to tour the gardens, pick their own vegetables to take home as well as receive a book about gardening; and the author of the book Terri Tells the Garden met us at the garden and signed all their books. As a support group to increase positive connections, it is important to us to stay connected to our girls and their families over the summer and to partner with local businesses and our city to support our girls. Throughout the year we also partner with local entrepreneurs to connect with our participants and guest speakers from colleges or various careers to share with our Girls Circle participants as we strive to provide them with the tools they need to be productive, financially independent citizens.“ - Britney Dent, Director of Programs LEAD Girls Inc.

Remember what we say in training: the KNOWLEDGE is WITHIN the CIRCLE.

Thanks to Britney and Jett for the creative work that they do with the youth they serve and for sharing with us and our greater community of facilitators. 

Join the facilitator support meetings on the 2nd Monday of each month at 10 am pacific / 1 pm eastern. They’re free on Zoom and each participant is put in a raffle for 1 activity guide of their choice. Link to the meeting on the Support & Resources page of the OCF website. https://onecirclefoundation.org/support