At Mother’s Choice,
we believe that even the youngest in our community
can play an active role
and when young people have the chance to serve their communities,
everyone benefits!
Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!
Carlynda, SIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council
Hi everyone, I’m Carlynda from the SIS YLC chapter and I’m in year 14, and I’m the current YLC president for the SIS chapter.
I think I first was connected with Mother’s Choice when I was doing a work experience at the Mother’s Choice Borrett office, some of the staff contacted me about the YLC. I decided I was interested in creating my own YLC chapter in SIS. And so that’s how we started.
I think the most memorable experience in awhile experiences was when we did a donation drive for the Child Care Home. At first, because we were really unrecognized by a lot of students and some advertising issues, we didn’t have a lot of items. But then eventually after we did whole school emails, we also did whole school broadcast, and we also gave out leaflets to different students. Eventually, we had so many donations that we filled out the whole car trunk and the back seat of the volunteer’s car.
Davina, SIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council
Hi, my name is Davina. I’m currently year 11 and I will be the next president of the YLC chapter at South Island School.
I actually initially heard about Mother’s Choice from my mom, as she was friends with two people who actually adopted children through Mother’s Choice, and they were both special needs children, and I found that really heartwarming, so I decided to join a Zoom meeting that sort of introduce the YLC to my school, and that’s how I joined.
I mean, for me, the most memorable moment was when I was the leader of the logistics team for the first time, and as all the members were older than me. I felt quite intimidated by that but at the end it managed to get everybody to cooperate and coordinate, and we were able to carry out a decent analysis for the #FindingFamily project. And so I think that helped me develop my leadership skills and helped me realize my potential, so I found that really memorable.
Some of the dreams or hopes that I have for the YLC is able to empower students and have more students at our school be able to learn about the issue, just be aware of the work of Mother’s Choice is doing and find out how they can actually contribute as well as the community. And I hope we can do this through having parents attend the seminars about possibly young mothers in the struggles they go through, so we can actually be able to share this with the students as well, as well as involving some of the students in the younger youth groups at our school through possibly helping them learn more about the issue, as well as being a represent to their peers, so we can further reach more people and be able to eliminate some of the stigmas or stereotypes of running issues.
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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.
If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org
For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/