MD Middle School Youth Council Leads the Way!

By Sevin H., Thanh N., and Sophia Y., MD Middle School Youth Council Members
Photos Courtesy of Thanh N. and Sophia Y., MD Middle School Youth Council Members

The MD Middle School Youth Council held its first meeting on Saturday, November 22nd. Thirteen youth from 5 different middle schools attended the meeting. These students became Youth Council Leaders through ways of voting, applications, and writing essays.

At this meeting, we met the other Youth Council Leaders and played an icebreaker activity to get to know each other better. It was a great meeting because we broke into our school groups to discuss and plan Student Service Learning (SSL) activities for our own schools. We are looking forward to meeting more youth and getting to connect with them across schools. We are also looking forward to leading activities in our middle school programs and gaining more leadership skills. We are excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with the MD High School Youth Council to plan the AALEAD Youth Summit and Fiesta Asia events. We had a very productive meeting and the future of AALEAD looks bright!

MD Middle School Program Coordinators Note: The MD Middle School Youth Council is made up of 20 elected youth leaders, 4 from each middle school. Youth Leaders meet bi-monthly with AALEAD program coordinators to plan in-class activities and field trips for their peers. In the next two weeks, these Youth Leaders will be facilitating after-school program meetings and leading SSL projects at their respective schools.

We are proud of these 20 youth for stepping up to be leaders and taking ownership of their AALEAD program. They are great role models for their peers and each other. Keep an eye out for the next blog post by the MD Middle School Youth Council Leaders. They will update the community on how their SSL activities went and what they have planned for 2015!