In case you missed it, our teens hosted a tremendously successful Community Dinner to help us close out the year. This was a huge service learning opportunity for our Community Action Cafe Scholars and Mentoring Bigs, as they learned first hand what it takes to hold a successful event of this magnitude. We are super proud of their efforts and the resulting event. We are also very thankful to our community for showing up for this event and our kids!
Our students created flyers and canvassed the community, being sure to invite community members, apartment managers, and local businesses on Franklin Gateway. They also practiced drafting professional emails in order to invite other Marietta business leaders, local political figures, and school representatives. They were so excited to see what a huge turn out they had. As you can see from the pictures, the building was packed! 120+ community members and guests joined us, and space quickly became limited, but this was a good problem to have, and the community had no problem squeezing in together with their neighbors to accommodate all of our guests.
The students also solicited donations from neighboring restaurants, receiving delicious contributions from Franklin Gateway restaurants: La Iguala Meat Market, Soul Food Train, and Golden Tropics Jamaican Restaurant. Our parents and community members also contributed dishes for this potluck style event, and everyone left very satisfied after sampling all of the yummy offerings.
This dinner was about more than just good food. The YELLS teens thought about every detail, including discussion questions that they developed and placed in the center of each table inspiring meaningful connections and partnerships between Franklin Gateway neighbors and businesses. The students strategically dispersed themselves at separate tables so that they could guide conversations between people. Each student had a role, whether is was to serve, welcome guests, capture memories in the photo booth, spark conversations or share testimonials of their achievements at YELLS on the mic. Thank you to Theron Furr, our teen Co-CEO for doing a great job as Master of Ceremonies at the event. It was not an easy task with it being such a packed house, but he kept the energy high the entire night!
Many of our K-5th ASP youth were also in attendance, and they enjoyed the event so much that they decided to model their own service project after this one, in which they created flyers to secure food donations that they would then serve to their younger peers during their holiday celebration. Our high school students did a great job of inspiring our younger students and showing them first hand how to be servant-leaders!
Our students from the K-5 scholars up through our graduating seniors are busy planning many more community events for the Spring. Be sure to keep in the loop for our Community Action Cafe Thursday night community events, and our Mentoring Program community service projects. You will not want to miss what they have in store!
