Happy November! As the school year and 2024 are beginning to wrap-up and wind-down, it has been a long week for many of us. However, the wheels of AHO keep turning, and there are endless tasks to keep us busy into the coming winter months.
This week at the Youth Leadership (YLT) meeting we continued working on our introduction for future Juvenile Hall (JH) speaking events over coffee and snacks at Aroma Cafe. To begin the meeting, we started with check-ins about our daily lives. These check-ins help us clear the space to begin focusing on the business at-hand, while helping us to continue getting to know each other better. Zara had the AHO introduction for JH printed and laminated for us so that we can take it with us so, in our “free time”, we can memorize and practice the introduction. This way we can all begin getting more comfortable sharing about AHO’s unique program for at-risk youth at JH, along with other YLT speaking opportunities in Marin. (In Photo: James, Kayla, Frida, Zara, and Nick at the Youth Leadership Meeting)
For next week’s meeting we asked everyone to come with a pen and paper to write down the 3- main points of the personal story we will share at JH. The 3-points are: our personal struggles, the turning point for changing our lives, and how AHO helped. Since everyone on the Team is not as comfortable speaking, we will help those with less experience in public speaking increase their confidence by practicing our stories, in groups of 2, at the next meeting. James suggested that maybe creating a post-it note with the 3-main points of our talk, along with several words that highlight what we want to say on those 3-topics could be helpful in preparing for our role-plays with each other.
I am excited for us to continue moving forward with this plan, and to get into more places where we can get the word out about AHO’s amazing opportunities for at-risk youth.
Cheers to persistence despite the difficulties,
Kayla