YELLS has seen many volunteers over the years that have impacted the lives of both our staff and the youth we serve. However, few have impacted our organization like one of our AmeriCorps Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA), who dedicated a year of her life to growing the operational capacity of YELLS in the midst of an unpredictable pandemic while simultaneously supporting our 3 programs every day. This month, we are spotlighting our amazing Volunteer Specialist, Amanda Jimenez Biehler, who is wrapping up her year of service with AmeriCorps!
Amanda was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, where she was involved in community service from a young age. She joined Girl Scouts in Kindergarten, introducing her to service projects and volunteer work, but Amanda says it was her family that really instilled in her a passion for helping those in need.
“With my family growing up, we would feed the homeless once a month. My entire family, all my cousins, aunts, uncles, we’d make a whole meal and then feed all the homeless in an area in town,” she said. “And when I got older, I think it was in high school, I started coordinating that. So I’ve always really liked to volunteer, I’ve done a ton of volunteer work. I was president of Youth for Direct Relief at my high school, which Direct Relief is a huge volunteer organization. I worked with fundraising and just doing different volunteer things like making mother kits and hygiene kits to hand out in the area. That’s how I’ve always enjoyed it.”
Amanda & YELLS
After graduating from UC Santa Barbara with degrees in biology and applied psychology, Amanda moved to Atlanta in the summer of 2021 with her husband Michael, who was set to begin a PhD program at Georgia Tech. She didn’t know what she would do during that time, but she wanted to find something that could allow her to serve a community, much like she did back home. Amanda stumbled across YELLS during her job search and was drawn in by the opportunity to be immersed in the Franklin Gateway community as an AmeriCorps VISTA.
“I really liked the fact that they focused on one community. I thought that would make it a little easier for me to make an impact working in one smaller area because Atlanta is huge. So because they work in a niche area, it’d be easier to make an impact and also get to know a community and the people that live there and the culture,” Amanda said.
Amanda officially joined YELLS on June 7, 2021, and has become an indispensable member of the YELLS family ever since! As our Volunteer Specialist, she coordinated with new and returning volunteers in our programs and worked with community partners to organize exciting volunteer opportunities. Amanda also built the capacity of our organization by engaging with families and community members in both English and Spanish, ensuring that language was not a barrier when accessing our services. But her work at YELLS extends far beyond just the volunteer realm! From the beginning she has stepped up and supported our three programs when needed, especially when it comes to filling in for the Mentoring Program and ASP.
“As soon as she came on and joined us last summer, she immediately understood the vision and rose to the occasion as far as stepping in and prepping and planning for the summer,” said ASP Coordinator Ms. Sherri. “She took a leadership role amongst newer staff, even though she was new herself, and I admired that from her. Since then, a lot of what we have been able to accomplish over the year probably would not have been completed had it not been for her, not only in supporting the staff, but championing things for us to do.”
In reflecting on the past year, Amanda says that she is most proud of the confidence she found in using her voice during her year of service to champion our youth. Whether it’s communicating with coworkers or advocating for our youth, she says that now she doesn’t shy away from speaking up and providing her ideas and input. A great example of this is the recent Scholar Dollars initiative that was implemented in ASP, which Amanda spearheaded along with our Scholar Success Specialist, Jamie.
“It all started with a conversation between Jamie and I. We were talking one day and talking about how in school, if you can guess the number of marbles in a jar in class, you can earn things,” Amanda said. “So it was really cool to see that from that conversation, we made it into something that the kids really enjoyed, and that it helped a lot of kids. For the ones that were really into it, I think it helped get their schoolwork done, and also gave them incentive to do more reading and things like that.”
Life After YELLS
With her year of service ending in early June, Amanda will continue part-time at YELLS Summer Camp as the ASP Social-Emotional Learning Specialist. After the summer, Amanda says she sees herself taking a few months of maternity leave to rest and prepare for the arrival of her first child, a baby girl! We all know she is going to be an excellent mother, and eventually she does see herself returning to school to receive a degree in clinical mental health counseling with the hope of one day working again with children in a community.
“Through this experience, I have come to realize that in the future I want to continue working with youth in some capacity. I have really enjoyed playing a role in helping shape and expose the youth to new things. Becoming a VISTA has helped me decide on wanting to be a counselor specifically working with youth or in the school systems in my future.”
Thank you Amanda for a truly remarkable year of service! You made an incredible impact at YELLS and the Franklin Gateway community, and your work in our organization will be remembered for a long time!
If you or someone you know is looking for a life changing experience like Amanda enjoyed through VISTA, consider joining our YELLS AmeriCorps VISTA team! Click here for more details on our VISTA roles.
On May 10th, 2022, YELLS had the pleasure of hosting its first Marietta Police Department Town Hall in over 2 years! Led by Major Jake King, the town hall was a real opportunity for Franklin Gateway residents to come together and engage with city representatives about the needs and concerns of their community. It was also great to see our Community Action Café teens get involved in the town hall as YELLS hosts, introducing speakers and addressing their community in a formal setting!
Crime Report
After an introduction from our Café teens, Major King began the town hall by lauding the 10 year decline in crime rates in Zone 1 (where Franklin Gateway is located). Of the 7,110 “calls of service” made to the Marietta Police Department in April 2022, only 788 of those came from Zone 1, and only 4 burglaries in Zone 1 were reported to police during that time. When asked what he attributes to declining crime rates in the zone, Major King cited a combination of positive city council decisions coupled with efforts from community programs, schools, and residents to get involved and make their community safer. As the only youth-focused non-profit on Franklin Gateway, YELLS is proud to be one of the community partners impacting the reduction in crime for Franklin Gateway. Since our daily youth programs began in 2011, crime has decreased by 59.42% in our neighborhood. Major King also praised the city’s new Public Safety Ambassador Program as an effective tool in handling the more innocuous and day-to-day issues affecting community members.
“Through the city council, they hired 12 (citizens as Public Safety Ambassadors), and we defer it like this: there’s some calls where you don’t need a gun Toter (police officer). Your tag was taken off your car overnight, you have no idea who took it, you just need a police report. Do you just need a report or do you need me to show up? You just need to report. So we have civilians that drive around in those silver Ford Escapes and they take all the reports for us, and direct traffic and stuff. So they are a force multiplier for us and help us and they also are really good crime scene technicians,” Major King said.
Play this audio to hear Major King’s thoughts on the decrease in crime rates, as well as new employment opportunities through the city’s Public Safety Ambassadors Program.
Community Members Engage With City Council Representatives
The town hall was also attended by City Councilmembers Joseph Goldstein (Ward 7) and Cheryl Richardson (Ward 1), who offered community updates and fielded questions from their constituents. Councilman Goldstein began by saying that overall the city is doing well and is about to enter a new fiscal year on July 1st. The city is looking at decreasing the millage rate slightly, possibly decreasing property taxes as well. He also touched on a new federal program called the Affordable Connectivity Plan, which could reimburse customers up to $30 per month on eligible internet plans (go to https://www.fcc.gov/acp for more information).
Many of the questions the council members received from community members in attendance had to do with the physical development of Franklin Gateway. When asked about the ongoing but slow-moving plan to construct an Ikea in the vacant lot across from Iguala’s Market, Councilman Goldstein said the city has not received updates from Ikea on that development in several years.
Councilwoman Richardson was asked about the possibility of having a community center on Franklin Gateway. FRCA co-president Antoinette Reed shared that YELLS is looking for a larger space that could provide even more opportunities for children and families, and the neighborhood has long been in need of community space that is publicly accessible to Franklin Gateway residents. While she said there were no allocated funds in the current SPLOST for a community center, Councilwoman Richardson did mention the planning and development of the Rottenwood Creek Trail, which will link Franklin Gateway all the way to Kennesaw Mountain via a paved trail, although she mentioned it would be a few years before the trail opens for public use.
Listen to City Council members Joseph Goldstein and Cheryl Richardson elaborate on the development of Rottenwood Creek Trail here:
“Seems like a lot of the questions were around infrastructure and the things that we can do to improve the physical nature of the community,” said candidate for Georgia House District 43 Ben Stahl after the town hall. “Not a lot of people were asking about crime or jobs or things like that, and those are kind of those intangible things that you can’t see. A lot of the questions were about those things you can see. Everyone was asking about the crosswalks, the buses, dilapidated houses, the IKEA spot, the spot on the north side of the road. And those all take time and money to fix those problems. And really, it starts at these kinds of events.”
Opportunities for Community Engagement
The Franklin Road Community Association (FRCA) co-president, Antoinette Reed, also raised a call to action for attendees to get involved and give back to their community. FRCA is a group made up of Franklin Gateway residents, and they are planning their annual Back to School Bash on July 23. Registration for this event is open now, and they are in need of neighbors and volunteers to join the planning committee to make this community-driven event possible! If you’d like to get involved and attend our planning meetings, please reach out to Daneea Badio-McCray at dbadio@mariettaga.gov.
Community Action Café Teens Take The Lead!
It was especially exciting to watch our Community Action Café teens facilitating this town hall as hosts! Two of our teens, Amiyah and Evan, opened the meeting with a strong bilingual introduction of Major King, and Andrew closed us out with a series of YELLS updates and thanked everybody for coming out. We’re proud of the way our teens took the initiative to stand in front of their community and speak with confidence and intent, and this certainly was not lost on the adults in attendance.
“I personally think it went well! It is always, in my mind, great to see the kids not only sitting in and asking questions, but also running it. So I’m always impressed with that.” said Councilwoman Richardson. “And this was a great turnout, attendance wise. I’ve been to places where we’ve had four people. So this is wonderful. It shows the interest in the community.”
All in all, the MPD Town Hall was an evening filled with engaging discussions between city representatives and residents of Franklin Gateway. YELLS is proud to be able to serve as a hub for the Franklin Gateway community, and we look forward to hosting more town halls in the future!
If you’re interested in learning more about the topics discussed at the Marietta Police Department Town Hall, play the audio below for further community updates from Major King and the City Council members representing Franklin Gateway:
In our efforts to revive the Franklin Fair after a two year hiatus, we are blessed to have the incredible continuing support from Stablegold Hospitality! For years, the team at Stablegold have demonstrated their commitment to our work of empowering youth and families in our community, and this year they took it a step further!
This year’s Franklin Fair is being organized by the Bigs in the YELLS Mentoring Program as a way for them to give back to the community that they call home. Like any community event, there is a lot of planning and coordination that must go into making the day a success, and at times our Bigs have run into obstacles securing donations and supplies for the fair. Luckily for our Bigs, they can rest easy knowing that Stablegold has got them covered!
Stablegold recently gave a generous contribution to be used to support the Franklin Fair and ensure that our Bigs have everything they need for a successful community event! On top of that, they have committed to providing and covering the expenses for food to be at the event, meaning that guests and community members can enjoy free food as they enjoy the day and interact with the different games and booths! There is no understating how huge this is; Stablegold’s multiple contributions will go a long way in supporting our Bigs and the Franklin Fair, making sure it will be an event to remember for a long time.
In the past, Mr. Ali Jamal and his team have shown that they truly care about giving back to and investing in the youth of our Franklin Gateway community. On top of sponsoring our Tenth Anniversary Networking Dinner, they also engage in our youth-led events, give generously to our cause, and have even supported YELLS families in crisis through temporary housing. With these most recent contributions, it is only right that Stablegold Hospitality has been chosen to be our Funder Spotlight this month! A massive thank you to everyone at Stablegold who believes in the YELLS mission!
YELLS is blessed with so many partners that pour into our youth and community and make our work possible. Often when we think about these amazing partners, our first impulse is to consider those that work directly with our youth. But the truth is that partners come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s extra special to see partners contributing to YELLS in their own way, even if they don’t directly work in youth empowerment. These partners think outside of the box to harness their gifts and resources to contribute and make a significant impact on our day-to-day operations. This month, we would like to recognize a new partner who fits this mold, and that is Chris Roupp with Synergy Systems and Solutions!
Chris is the Managing Partner of Synergy Systems and Solutions, a copier company based in Atlanta. A few years ago, in the early days of building his company, Chris found himself walking through Franklin Gateway and introducing himself to different local businesses, offering his services if needed. It was during this walk that Chris first stumbled upon YELLS, and what started as a simple conversation about printing services quickly evolved into a broader discussion about the YELLS mission and how we empower our youth to give back and serve their community. Chris said that something about that initial conversation struck a familiar chord in him.
“So my whole family are educators. And I sell copiers. But I have a strong leaning toward that, and toward the purpose of what you guys are trying to accomplish. So as soon as I got that feeling, then I was like, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m finally in a position where I get to make decisions about what I want to do for supporting organizations and stuff.’ It’s not like I’ve got a ton of income coming in. We just started probably weeks before I first stopped in to see YELLS. But what I can do is I can give you a copier, and I can give you services associated with it. So that’s the piece that I can provide.”
At the time, YELLS didn’t have an immediate need for a free copier. But a few years later, our Executive Director, Laura, did reach back out to Chris asking if his offer was still on the table, and a month ago Chris personally came to YELLS to install a brand new copier along with associated services like ink cartridges at no cost to our organization! The donated copier and printing savings has been a game changer, allowing us to print the resources we need for engaging lessons and the fliers our youth create to promote their events for our community. The incredible value of this contribution is felt every day. This kind gesture was not lost on us, and it further served to remind us that the work we do isn’t lost on those who cross paths with our organization.
“Part of my vision when I opened up the company is that when it comes to being a member of an association to support, I wanted to pick two that I really believed in and go full bore with those two,” Chris explained. “And very similar, I’m not going to donate copiers all over town. I’m not doing this to get my name out there or to be able to name drop or earn more business; I’m doing it because I really believe in the mission of what you guys are trying to accomplish. I probably meet with 100 different businesses every day, and I’m sure 99 of them would love to have a donated copier. But it really has to be something that speaks to me and also, on the selfish end, fills that void of doing something to be able to help out in that education space that I’m not fully contributing to.”
Moving forward, Chris sees a couple of ways for this partnership to continue growing. He has always been a firm believer that sales can be a great equalizer for a lot of people, and expressed interest in possibly leading workshops with our Community Action Cafe teens about the power of sales as a viable career path. Many of the YELLS values that we aim to instill in our youth, values like self-respect, having a growth mindset, and a willingness to always improve, also correlate to success in a sales field. Chris thinks giving teens alternative options on how to proceed in life can go a long way in helping them get to where they want to go.
We’re very grateful to Chris Roupp and his generous donation to YELLS! Sometimes what makes a great partner is simply an appreciation of the values we share, and a willingness to contribute to our mission. Although Chris doesn’t work in youth empowement, his actions just go to show that these shared values can transcend industries.
“For me, I’m not an educator like the rest of my family. But these are little things that I can do along the way, in order to still get back to what I believe is a righteous cause.”
Whenever possible, we like to take a moment to pause and celebrate some of our amazing youth who exemplify our YELLS values in beautiful and inspiring ways. At the heart of our mission is to serve and empower our youth to see themselves as change-makers, equipped with the tools and knowledge to make their world a better place. This week, we are spotlighting Abigail and Joshua Saho, two of our ASP Scholars who were recently published in a book!
Abby (9) and Joshua (7) are sister and brother in our Afterschool Program, and they recently had some of their writing included in Stories by Children, a collection of short stories and poems published by The Fernance and Cyrilla Family Club (FCFC). FCFC is a family organization formed by descendants of Fernance and Cyrilla Prince of Grand Fond, Dominica, who also happened to be Abigail and Joshua’s great grandparents!
“We have a group called FCFC, because my great grandparents, their names are Fernance and Cyrilla,” Abby says. “So that’s the name of the group and my extended family on my mother’s side, we’re really close. Since Corona hit, we couldn’t do family reunions anymore. So we would do Zoom, and we were like, ‘we need something else to bring us closer together.’ So we said, ‘Hey, all of us like writing, how about we write a book?’”
And write a book they did! In January 2021, FCFC created Stories by Children, Volume 1 as a literary movement celebrating the poems, prose, and short stories written by the children of Dominica and the diaspora. This movement aims to create excitement about reading and writing while providing an avenue for creative expression and boosting the self-esteem of children of the extended Prince family.
Volume 1 is all about FAMILY, which is fitting considering that many of the children featured in the book are Abby and Joshua’s cousins and extended family! This book is a reminder of the family bonds that connect them all together even as they are scattered around the world. When the book was published, FCFC organized a listening party where the kids had the chance to read their stories on the public radio!
“It was not in this country; it was in Dominica. They had a party and we were all on the radio because not a lot of people over there like TV. So they have radios and there was music playing and it was really fun! I got to listen to myself on the radio and I felt so special,” Abby said with a smile.
The Fernance and Cyrilla Family Club intend to build on this literary movement by releasing a second volume of Stories by Children, and Abby and Joshua are already working on the stories they want to include in that edition. Joshua has a knack for writing fun poems, while Abby’s favorite stories to write are fiction, and she often puts herself at the center of her stories as the main character!
“I like reading and word study and how words are spelled. So I like writing more, because I can go more into it with the words… When I read it over, it really shows an adventure. I can feel what I’m saying in each part (of the story).”
All proceeds from the sale of this book will go into an education fund for the authors, so please consider purchasing a copy to support Abby, Joshua, and the other young child authors on their literary adventures! Copies of Volume 1 (and soon Volume 2!) of Stories by Children are available for purchase here. Everyone at YELLS is so proud of Abby and Joshua for their hard work, and we can’t wait to read what they write next!
Wow, what a journey this past year has been! With yet another year under our belts, we want to take a look back on the past 12 months and show you what we’ve been up to! 2021 was a year with lots of challenges that tested our resilience as an organization, but it was also a year of immense growth and accomplishments. Like many other organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic has redefined how YELLS approaches its programs and services for the youth of Franklin Gateway. Many of our non-vital services (like these recurring newsletters) really took a hit as we had to channel our full attention towards operating our programs in a way that ensured the safety of our staff and students while still providing valuable educational experiences and community building opportunities for our youth. From virtual programming to safely reopening our doors, it has been quite the learning experience doing what we do during the pandemic! Now, as the sun sets on one year and rises on another, we feel empowered to take on 2022 with confidence and faith in our YELLS family and community partners, knowing that whatever happens, we will be okay. So with that in mind, let’s reflect on this past year and bring you up to speed!
Achieving Outcomes
Despite the challenges of virtual programming during the 2020-2021 school year, we achieved incredible outcomes for our youth and families! In total, YELLS served 108 youth and their families in 2021. Last May, YELLS youth had a 100% graduation rate with all 11 of our seniors graduating high school, plus 4 YELLS students who graduated a year early! Additionally:
96% of our youth were promoted on grade level
88% of youth improved by a letter grade or maintained a B or above in Math or ELA.
95% of YELLS parents rated their child’s self-esteem and confidence after participating in YELLS as “excellent” or “ good” (this represents an increase from only 54% on pre-surveys at the start of the year)
And it doesn’t stop there! Throughout the year, our YELLS Community Action Café high school teens participated in professional development workshops where they learned to write strong resumes, practiced interviewing skills, and developed networking and outreach techniques by engaging with partners to facilitate new programs to serve their community. All in all, the professional skills we taught them proved fruitful as 9 YELLS teens secured jobs!
YELLS was also successful in implementing new ways to support our youth once we did return to in-person programming. This past fall, our Volunteer Engagement Specialist, Ms. Amanda, introduced a new initiative to the YELLS Afterschool Program called Scholar Dollars! The Scholar Dollars program incentivizes our ASP kids to improve their academic enrichment by rewarding their extra effort with YELLS-branded “scholar dollars” that they can use to purchase a host of prizes and special experiences. Click here to learn more about how Scholar Dollars have gotten our students excited about reading, completing their homework, and taking on new assignments!
We are very proud of the outcomes we achieved this past year because it reflects the growth and success of the youth in our programs! It is also a reminder of the work still to be done to empower our young people to rise up as servant leaders in their community.
Making the Most of Virtual
All YELLS programs remained virtual during the 2020-2021 school year, with our team expertly navigating virtual programming to provide engaging workshops, emotional support and wellness, and daily individualized tutoring for our youth. There is a genuine concern that students in general are being negatively affected by the loss of in-person schooling, suffering academically, socially, and emotionally as a result. For this reason, it was imperative for us that we offered strategic and individualized instruction for our youth in order to offset the gaps from lost in-person schooling. Our virtual programs allowed our students to connect with their peers while also expanding their academic enrichment and creating content aimed at practicing social and emotional skills that may have been impacted during virtual learning.
We also strived to support our YELLS families directly during this difficult time. Our families received activity supply drop-offs to aid in their child’s virtual learning as well as book donations delivered right to their doorstep! We also connected families with resource referrals to meet their immediate needs and informed parents with tools and coping strategies to navigate the pandemic. Perhaps most impactfully, YELLS also raised funds to provide over $20,000 in rental assistance to families struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic! We felt truly blessed to be able to assist our families in this way, especially considering all of the love and support they have shown us in the past.
There was a lot to be proud of in the virtual space for our youth! We watched our ASP kids mature and find their voice as they gained skills in coding and debating, and learned to examine complex issues in our society. They also learned to adopt a growth mindset through interactive virtual activities like designing their own “I am Powerful” posters, turning negative statements into “I can” statements, learning about love languages, and practicing positive self-talk and affirmations.
ASP youth also studied the importance of civic engagement and voting when we all got together on Zoom to watch the Inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris. Our kids celebrated in style as they dressed up with pearls and American flags that we provided in their drop-off packages. Afterwards, they wrote their own presidential pledges and together analyzed Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem. It was beautiful to watch our youth speak with confidence while respecting their peers’ opinions as they applied what they learned to solve our nation’s problems and debate in what ways we have and have not achieved MLK’s dream.
Being in the virtual space challenged our Community Action Café teens to think outside the box and find creative ways to serve the community in the midst of a pandemic. Our CAC teens dream big, and together they came up with some amazing ideas for outdoor, socially-distanced events that would bring the community together safely. They learned to effectively navigate various mediums both as professionals and community leaders as they created digital fliers, sent professional emails, and advertised their events on social media. They also showed initiative when it came time to planning and organizing their resources on the day.
The first was a “Paint and Vibe” event that brought families together in the YELLS parking lot to have fun and paint some beautiful art! They also planned the “Parking Lot Cinema” outdoor movie night, where our families and youth enjoyed pizza and snacks while watching a movie together on a projector. These events were a lot of fun, and we were really proud of our teens for rising to the challenge and planning meaningful events for our families to come together safely!
Welcome Back to In- PersonSummer Camp!
After months of virtual programs, we were (finally!) preparing to open our doors for in-person summer camp! It had been over a year since YELLS had any students in the building, so we knew how important this six-week summer camp was going to be as we continued to reopen and understand our boundaries. Most importantly, we finally got to see our kids in person again!
Our summer camp began in June 2021 and ran for nine hours every day for six weeks, providing significant support to parents who rely on YELLS for childcare. Our Volunteer Engagement Specialist, Ms. Amanda, began with us that June and got to experience YELLS for the first time in that space. In reflecting on the summer, Ms. Amanda only had positive things to say about the in-person summer camp experience.
“I think it was really successful! It got us to see and think about what worked, and it also allowed us to prep the space for in-person learning because we were able to see what individual activities we could do, and have our protocols in line,” she said. “And a lot of the kids who came back after summer camp already had a strong idea about what the protocols looked like and were already in that mindset of being respectful of the space. It also prepared staff to see what worked, what didn’t work, how many supplies were needed and how to share and distribute different games to different pods.”
Every day our ASP kids launched into choice clubs, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) challenges, book clubs, and other literacy activities led by our staff. The rest of the day – thanks to a partnership with the City of Marietta – was spent at the sports complex fields where we all got to run around, play sports, and enjoy the sunshine!
For one of the choice clubs, our leadership instructor (and former YELLS youth) Ansleigh, led a music club for the kids where each week was dedicated to a different genre and they would listen to music and learn about the history of that particular genre! One week, Ansleigh took our kids through the history of rap and its origins, and as an exercise each child wrote their own rap verses, which they really enjoyed! Another choice club that we had was our French club, where one of our former AmeriCorps VISTAs taught our youth some French, led them in decorating croissants, and together they built models of the Eiffel Tower, further encouraging their engineering and art skills.
In past years during summer camp, YELLS would take a field trip every Friday to keep our kids moving and learning in different fun settings. Although we couldn’t travel anywhere because of COVID, we still wanted to provide our youth with fun alternative field trip experiences within Franklin Gateway. One of these in-house field trips was a petting zoo that we set up at the sports complex, and our kids had an absolute blast playing with bunnies, chickens, pigs, and goats! They got to hold and pet the animals while they learned all about them. This was one of the highlights of summer camp and it’s certainly something that we are looking to do again considering how much the kids loved it!
Our Café teens were also involved in summer camp! Every day they participated in an Art Fellowship Track and a Media Production Track, where they experimented with different artistic mediums, produced a short video, and even hosted their first podcast! These rotations were helpful in teaching our teens how to combine their artistic creativity with media production know-how to create exciting content across different platforms.
Of course, we did have to make some adjustments given the nature of operating during a pandemic. But being back in-person allowed us to go more in-depth than in our virtual programming to really fill those learning gaps and rebuild those social-emotional skills between youth and families. All in all, in-person summer camp was a huge success and really set the tone for what in-person programming would look like during the school year.
Connecting with the Community
When August rolled around, we were able to open up our programs again alongside the school schedule for the first time in over a year! It felt so good to finally be back together again, and even though we were masked up and socially distanced, we all knew this was how our programs were meant to be experienced. Reopening our doors also opened the possibility of connecting with the Franklin Gateway community in ways we weren’t able to do because we were virtual for so long.
The school year kicked off with a bang when the Franklin Road Community Association (FRCA) hosted their annual Back to School Bash to celebrate Franklin Gateway students returning to school! The focus of this drive-thru event at the sports complex was to give registered Franklin Gateway families backpacks filled with school supplies to ensure our youth have everything they need to thrive in the new school year. This was a great way to kick off the fall semester and it was a big help for the Franklin Gateway students that relied on these supplies to succeed academically!
More than anything, we were SO EXCITED to have our youth back with us in the building after-school each day this year! The fall was full of learning and growth, and our YELLS team has done an incredible job of developing dynamic activities that kept our youth gaining skills while staying safe during in-person programs. Check out some of our favorite activities:
That being said, those first few weeks back in person were not always smooth sailing. With one week to go before the Mentoring Program was set to begin, we were informed that their usual meeting space was no longer available to use, and it was imperative that our Bigs and Littles had a place to foster those mentoring relationships. Luckily, out of this challenge we created an important new partnership that has quickly become a staple of the Mentoring Program today. Laura connected with Mr. Richard Leon, Director of Sales and Marketing at The Radisson Hotel just down the street from YELLS, who generously offered for The Radisson to host the Mentoring Program, first until the end of the year, and then that offer was extended through the end of March 2022 at least! Click here to learn more about our partnership with The Radisson and Mr. Richard Leon, and we want to extend our deepest gratitude for how they have supported the Mentoring Program these past few months. We really couldn’t have done it without them!
Incredibly, The Radisson wasn’t the only new partner that we gained this fall. We also grew our partnership with Food Security for America (FSA) and added a new partner, Northside United Methodist Church (NUMC), to allow us to provide weekly produce to families at YELLS. FSA now offers access to fresh fruits and veggies, and the awesome volunteers at NUMC sort this fresh produce and deliver them to YELLS weekly for our Community Action Café teens to then distribute out to our families at dismissal. This came to be known as Produce Tuesday! This partnership also gave our teens the opportunity to practice skills that they would normally develop through serving customers in the Café by coordinating the deliveries and building relationships with families as they handed the produce to parents each week. The teens even created recipe cards so families could get creative with healthy ways to incorporate the different produce into their meals. All in all, Produce Tuesday has been a great way for YELLS to restore community connections between our Franklin Gateway families while providing them with fresh and healthy produce!
After a few weeks of providing fresh produce to our families, we noticed that we would always have a couple extra bags left over, and we wanted to find a way to give this produce away while still supporting Franklin Gateway residents. We learned that McCleskey-East Cobb Family YMCA organizes their own food drive at the Dwell Apartments across the street from YELLS every Wednesday, and so we partnered with them by donating our extra produce to their food drive! We are very proud of this partnership because it ensures that, even when we aren’t directly helping the families on Franklin Gateway, we can still support the people who are.
As fall rolled on, we continued to think about how we can organize different events that would bring the YELLS community together in a safe way. One such event was Trunk or Treat, which was spearheaded by our wonderful Bilingual Family Engagement Specialist, Christi Graham! This unique Halloween event brought out everyone’s creative side by decorating the trunks of their cars with spooky and exciting stations, from a haunted house to a portal to another dimension!
The pandemic has certainly affected how kids everywhere trick-or-treated, so it was a special moment watching our youth getting excited about Halloween as they walked around in their costumes interacting with the different stations. This event was a huge success and showed us all that we can still come together and have fun while also practicing safe protocols.
Our Community Action Café teens stayed engaged with weekly culinary workshops where they learned to prepare a variety of treats, from nachos to hot chocolate, while also pushing them to think about novel ways to serve their community. Although we couldn’t invite any community members up to the café to enjoy these treats because of our COVID protocols, our teens set up a hot chocolate bar during dismissal to serve to kids and families as they were being picked up. This was a fun way for our CAC teens to gain hands-on experience serving our community while keeping them warm during the cold evenings!
We entered the giving season knowing that there was so much to be thankful for! The Franklin Road Community Association hosted their annual Holidays Around The World Drive-Thru event at the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex, where so many Franklin Gateway families were blessed with presents donated and sorted by our community volunteers!
By the end of the year, we were especially fortunate to have so many (and we mean SO MANY!) gifts and toys donated for our kids from a bunch of different community partners! Special thanks to Marietta Police Athletic League, Home Depot Marietta Technology Center, Parkway One and Two, Bridging The Gap, United Way of Greater Atlanta, and Assurant (phew!) for each going out of their way to find out what our YELLS kids wanted for the holidays, and boy did they deliver on the gifts! Our kids were ecstatic to take home their presents, and it was a real highlight of ours to see so many partners show their love for YELLS like that. Thank you to everyone who donated to YELLS during the holiday season!
Looking Ahead to 2022
As we close the door on everything that we’ve accomplished in 2021, we face this new year with a lot to look forward to! Our Community Action Café teens will be flexing their marketing and culinary muscles as they work towards launching a mobile cafe for the Franklin Gateway community. Hopefully, community members will soon be able to enjoy tasty treats made by the teens that they can pick up outdoors in front of our YELLS building or in spots throughout the community!
This year, our Mentoring Program Bigs are finally taking the reins and are planning two incredible service projects for the Franklin Gateway community. The first is a single mothers event aimed at supporting single mothers in the community by connecting them with valuable community resources, as well as helping to build a network of mothers willing to support and uplift each other. We are beyond proud of our Bigs for having the awareness and empathy to think of the mothers of our community in this way. We see it as a direct reflection of the values and mentality that we aim to instill in our youth: empowering our youth to believe that they not only possess the skills, but hold the duty, to change their world!
The second event is the Franklin Fair! The Franklin Fair is an annual celebration of the community that sees Franklin Gateway residents come together to eat culturally diverse food from local restaurants and play fun carnival games! This community hasn’t seen a Franklin Fair since the spring of 2019, so for our Bigs and Littles to work hard to bring this event to life will symbolize a significant milestone for them, considering all that they’ve been through.
YELLS Bigs came up with these amazing projects after an extensive exploration of their community. They learned to conduct a community needs assessment where they identified strengths and areas for growth after reflecting on a community-wide scavenger hunt. They also explored a variety of causes by talking with community leaders and activists during our “Cause Tables” event to spark ideas for how they could create meaningful change on Franklin Gateway. Follow this link to learn more about the Mentoring Program journey over the past year and relish all the hard work they have put in!
This year has been a defining one for YELLS. The emergence of the Omicron variant stands as a stark reflection of the unpredictable and cyclical nature of this pandemic, but it also is a testament to our resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity. We will no doubt have some beautiful successes to celebrate this year, and we will also likely face some hardships. But whatever unforeseen obstacles we will encounter in 2022, we will overcome them the same way we have overcome all the others: together.
Here at YELLS, we have always been proud of the various innovative ways that we serve the students in our programs. From our teen-led Community Action Café to the different community projects conceived by the Bigs and Littles in our Mentoring Program, our goal is to instill in our kids the values and confidence for them to assume their own personal and academic growth. With this in mind, we are excited to announce a new initiative recently implemented in our Afterschool Program (ASP): YELLS Scholar Dollars!
The Scholar Dollars program incentivizes our ASP youth to improve their academic enrichment by rewarding their extra effort with YELLS-branded “scholar dollars” that they can use to purchase a host of prizes and special experiences every week, including fidget spinners, bean bag privileges, and even spending an afternoon as a guest in the Community Action Café.
“The hope in the program is that students are maximizing the academic rotation, whether that is reading more, whether that is completing their homework assignments, or completing additional enrichment activities provided by our scholar success specialist,” said Sherri Burrell, our ASP coordinator and lead teacher.
This is our Scholar Dollars cart; the one-stop shop for all Scholar Dollar transactions and rewards! Here our ASP kids can use their hard-earned dollars to buy toys, extra snacks, iPad time, and even fun experiences like beanbag privileges and Café time!
In the few weeks that the Scholar Dollars program has been put into place, Ms. Sherri has already noticed tangible improvements in our students’ academic enrichment! She said that more students are completing their homework assignments during the academic block, clocking in more minutes of reading than before, and they’re also reading better. Furthermore, she said students are feeling proud about completing their assignments and earning Scholar Dollars!
“So far (the kids) have really enjoyed it! I feel that they see it as a way for them to earn the things that they want to earn, but know the importance of getting the academics completed,” Ms. Sherri said. “I think all of them also really just enjoy being able to earn something for the work that they’ve done, and have other people celebrate that they’re working hard and doing the things that they need to get done.”
Our ASP kids get really excited by Scholar Dollars! You can feel the energy in the room every Wednesday when the kids line up for their turn at the Scholar Dollar Store, where they can buy a host of prizes like snacks, beanbag time, and more!
The Scholar Dollars extend beyond just academic enrichment as well. This initiative gives our ASP kids the opportunity to practice money management skills, and we have seen firsthand how they are learning the benefits to saving their money for more expensive prizes or experiences down the line. Our kids are deciding for themselves whether to treat themselves in the moment or to hold onto their money for something bigger and better.
“That’s why candy is a dollar. Because even if you just get your homework done, you at least can reward yourself with something later down the line,” said Ms. Sherri. “Or you can say, ‘No, I want something big, I’m gonna do everything every single day.’ Well, that shows some perseverance and that shows determination, that shows that you see a goal and you’re willing to do everything you have to do in order to reach that goal.”
The Scholar Dollars initiative has also been a great opportunity for Community Action Café teens to practice their serving and hospitality skills! When our little ones use Scholar Dollars to purchase time in the Café, our teens are the ones serving snacks and facilitating fun games for the little one’s to play! This is one way that the Café has come back to serve the community since the pandemic halted operations.
As the Scholar Dollar program grows, we are always thinking about different ways to incorporate it into our programming. Our K-1st graders can now earn scholar dollars by practicing good behaviors and habits, further incentivizing them to be aware of their own behaviors from a young age and encouraging healthy social and emotional skills. So far, the Scholar Dollars program has been hugely popular among YELLS students, and we are very excited to see how the initiative will be reflected in our students’ grades at the end of the year!
We are truly fortunate to have volunteers who come in and work hands-on with our kids, making sure they have the support and resources they need to thrive. This month, we’re spotlighting a special new volunteer who has been leading our ASP kids and CAC teens in valuable social-emotional learning workshops: Sarah Gazaway from Georgia State University’s HAPPI Lab!
Sarah Gazaway is a third year doctoral student in the counseling psychology program at Georgia State, and she has been a part of the HAPPI Lab since 2017. For the past few months, Sarah has been leading positive psychology workshops tailored to both our café teens upstairs and our ASP kids downstairs. These workshops are designed to introduce our kids to the idea of practicing positive psychology as a way to improve their social and emotional health!
“My goal in partnering with YELLS is, in those short amounts of time that we have together, to try to create a practical application of some positive psychology practices, be it gratitude, or humility or forgiveness, that they can practice during the week, either with fellow peers, with their family, or even at their school. And it really rounds it down into how you actually do it and practice it together,” Sarah said.
The HAPPI LAB
The HAPPI Lab, a.k.a the Humility and the Advancement of Positive Psychology Interventions Lab, was founded by Sarah’s advisor, Dr. Don Davis, with the intention of helping students develop expertise in positive psychology while also researching the benefits that positive psychology can have on people’s wellbeing. Sarah describes positive psychology as “the study of the good life”; strengths-based approaches to living that can help us all develop more meaningful lives! Through this lens, Sarah and the HAPPI Lab began doing outreach to help take what they were learning in the research realm and apply it to different populations. This ultimately led Sarah to connecting with YELLS, where she has since led different workshops for our kids based on their scientific research.
It’s been amazing to see how our kids have engaged with Sarah’s workshops over the weeks! In one of her lessons, Sarah taught our kids about how to identify positive character strengths in each other, and she adjusted her lesson plan to fit the needs of the teens upstairs and the smaller kids downstairs. Her workshop with the teens was casual and conversational, whereas with the ASP kids her lesson was more structured and high energy, but both workshops got our kids thinking about what it means to possess these character strengths. In another workshop, Sarah talked about how showing gratitude can play a meaningful role in our kids’ happiness and facilitate conversations that strengthen their relationships with family and friends.
“There’s such power in relationships,” said Sarah. “And really relationships where there are mentors, people who can regularly speak into the lives of these kids to say, ‘Here are the strengths I see that you have, and here’s how I see you doing that’, and guiding them, like scaffolding approaches to help them see how they can use those strengths to take a step towards a life that they want to live.”
“And yet also,” Sarah continues, “I’m presenting content, especially for the high schoolers, that’s actually pretty deep in nature, and not what they usually do. In the gratitude workshop, for example, they’re not usually talking about who’s meant something in their life, and then writing a letter to that person that they may intentionally give to them; that can feel really uncomfortable. So I am definitely pushing them early. And I’ve appreciated any of the space that they’ve allowed that to happen. So I try to not take that for granted.”
As our relationship with the HAPPI Lab continues to grow, Sarah said she’s looking ahead towards expanding the HAPPI Lab’s reach in the community. The HAPPI Lab is developing a content team that Sarah said will create more formalized positive psychology workshops designed for specific age groups and organizations. This team will soon begin creating understandable and entertaining content for all of our YELLS kids, from the kindergarteners to our high schoolers, that aligns with the YELLS principles while still maintaining the freedom to teach this information in the best way possible. Sarah’s hope is to one day go even further by developing positive psychology workshops for our parents as well, as she feels that these practices are most effective when the whole family is engaged with the ideas she’s teaching at YELLS.
“One of the things that’s really great is that I really feel like this partnership is one where I’m just helping bolster that which is already happening at YELLS. That YELLS mission really is a strengths-based model, one of servant leadership, one of helping grow these students to utilize their strengths to serve the community, and in that way, to thrive as individuals. And so that’s wonderful. That’s really what we’re about. So it was a really easy ‘yes’ for me when Laura came and asked, ‘Do you want to partner with us?’, because we really believe in what YELLS was doing.”
Thank you so much to Sarah and the HAPPI Lab for bringing these important positive psychology workshops into YELLS! We look forward to continuing this partnership and seeing how our kids begin to use some of what they’re learning in Sarah’s workshops in their own lives!
Back in 2008, YELLS started out as a mentoring program only, matching Marietta High School ‘Bigs’ with 3rd-5th grade Franklin Gateway ‘Littles’ in personalized mentoring relationships that the students then nurture throughout the year. Since then, YELLS has evolved into a dynamic and multifaceted organization that serves the Franklin Gateway community with three different programs. But the Mentoring Program has always stood apart from the others as a special after-school experience that provides the opportunity for elementary school Littles to be mentored by a high school Big, empowering each other to rise up as leaders while serving their community.
In years past, our mentoring youth have organized various community projects aimed at serving the residents of Franklin Gateway. From neighborhood-wide soccer tournaments to the annual Franklin Fair, these community projects are the result of months of consistent hard work and dedication from our Bigs and Littles. So when COVID-19 shut down all YELLS operations back in March 2020, our Mentoring Program Coordinator, Ms. Brittany, had to rethink how this program could serve these students during this difficult period in their lives.
“In 2019 when I accepted the job, 2020 happened. Projects were canceled; 2021 the same thing. So I have not seen what the big grand finale is supposed to be with these kids. My grand finale was always different,” Ms. Brittany said. “For a lot of our virtual programming and concepts, I had to take the emphasis off of creating community projects; it was more so about surviving the pandemic mentally. A lot of the lessons and everything that we began to talk about was about taking care of yourself during the virtual world, protecting your peace, treating others the way you want to be treated, being a leader, being a light that shines in dark places, those types of things.”
As important as these life skills are for kids to practice during a pandemic, the past two years have certainly been a challenge for the Mentoring Program. Our Bigs had to juggle the emotional toll of the pandemic while attending virtual school during the day, and once it came time for students to log on to Zoom for the Mentoring Program, Ms. Brittany said some students had lost the motivation to connect. As the program coordinator, this hit her hard, and when our programs finally returned to in-person for the start of the 2021/22 school year, Ms. Brittany was fired up to revive the Mentoring Program and provide a safe space for Bigs and Littles to mentor and support each other. More so, she was determined to make the program a meaningful and exciting experience for the students by building up the anticipation for the big day when the Bigs and Littles finally discovered their permanent mentoring match! This is called the Match Party, and it is a fundamental part of this program. Celebrating this milestone goes a long way in how the Bigs and Littles approach and ultimately realize their community projects.
“The whole point of this program existing is for them to be mentors and mentees to one another. So if (the match party) is not special, what’s making it special for them to even want to be a part of this program? That’s how I began to look at it,” Ms. Brittany said. “Once you finally bring them all in a room, and it’s like ‘Hey, somebody across the room from you is going to be your mentor and y’all are gonna do the school year together.’ If that’s the root and the foundation of this program, knowing that this is going to be your person and this is gonna be your person, why not drag it out and make it dramatic and exciting!”
That being said, the Match Party is only successful through the hard work that our youth put in during the weeks building up to that day. And there was a lot of work to be done before they could reap the rewards!
Mentoring Boot Camp
The purpose of the Mentoring Program is to equip our Bigs with the skills and training they need to impact their community while setting a positive example for their Littles. But before our Bigs even get to meet the Littles, they have to attend a weekend of leadership training that we call Mentoring Boot Camp! Led by Ms. Brittany, the Mentoring Boot Camp gives our Bigs their first taste of the Mentoring Program and sets the expectations for the year. It is in these training sessions that they first learn how to use their newfound leadership skills to successfully mentor their Littles while also serving their community.
This year, Mentoring Boot Camp started off with outdoor communication games that challenged our Bigs to communicate effectively to overcome obstacles that might arise when working towards a common goal. As they eventually begin organizing their community projects, these communication skills will be key in delegating tasks and solving real-world problems in order to see their hard work come to life. Additionally, every game that they play during Boot Camp are games that they can lead for the Littles later on, so learning these leadership skills plays an important role for our Bigs in developing their special mentoring relationships.
Next up, our Bigs set off on a community-wide scavenger hunt armed with pen and paper to assess the needs of Franklin Gateway. They took notes on the community needs and assets that they found, and in doing so learned to think critically about the ways that they can impact and serve their community! After exploring Franklin Gateway, our Bigs reconvened in the Community Action Café where they discussed the strengths and areas for growth they observed throughout the community, pinning their observations on the wall to create a giant mind-map.
The back wall of the Community Action Café became a tapestry of community needs and good ideas, and visualizing these needs gave our Bigs a strong framework of the kinds of community projects that would best address the needs of people living on Franklin Gateway. This was vital as our Bigs began to understand that they possess the knowledge and power required to leave a lasting impact on their community.
“I feel like the fact that as teenagers, they’ve already made the decision to want to even be a part of the organization before they even know what the organization is going to give them. I think they’re set apart to be a different type of person, a different type of teenager.” Ms. Brittany said. “So it doesn’t make it hard to take them on this journey because they already stepped out the first box, which is what high school was supposed to be or what they’re supposed to do as a high school teenager. They’re just ready to be different.”
First Day of Mentoring
Shortly after boot camp, all of our mentoring kids came together for day one of the Mentoring Program for that year! This was the first real opportunity for Bigs and Littles to meet each other, and it was also the first opportunity for Ms. Brittany to set the tone for what the kids should expect from this program. She’s had a vision of what this program is meant to look like since 2019, and the time has finally come to follow through on those expectations and hit the ground running!
More than anything, day one of the Mentoring Program serves to introduce our youth to the ‘one tribe’ mentality needed to succeed in this program. This is the theme of the Mentoring Program, and as in any tribe, our Mentoring Program youth must operate as a collective in order to achieve their goals for this year and foster their mentoring relationships.
“A tribe is a group of people or organization of people that work together, to live, to eat, to take care of one another and things of that sort. And I think that means a lot,” Ms. Brittany said. “So for the mentoring kids in the YELLS space, us being this group of people that have to work with little kids and give to the community and all of these things, we are doing a lot together. And I feel like the only way for us to be able to accomplish the things that we’re supposed to do within a year is if we’re all on the same page of understanding that foundation; that we’re doing this together, we’re a unit of people, we’re a group of people. So therefore we need to operate as a tribe, we need to have that mentality for us to all be successful.”
Day one was mostly spent playing different group games where our youth got the chance to learn more about one another while working together. It was also Ms. Brittany’s first chance to gauge compatibility between different Bigs and Littles, and this would serve to inform her decisions on how to later pair the Bigs and Littles at the Match Party.
Mentoring Cause Tables
A month later, our Bigs came in for their first real test as community servant-leaders. They were tasked with hosting a Cause Tables event, bringing together community expert guests to learn about and discuss a wide array of pertinent social causes. As our Bigs began to dream about using their skills and passions to make change, our Cause Tables event provided an opportunity for them to engage with different perspectives and ideas for how they can better understand the needs within our Franklin Gateway community and generate lasting change.
This event was a significant moment for our mentoring kids because it was their first chance to take charge of something bigger than themselves in this program! Our high school Bigs practiced their public speaking and leadership skills as they introduced their guests, welcomed them into the YELLS space, and facilitated important conversations about how to serve their community as it relates to those challenges. The experts we brought in held a wealth of knowledge relating to topics like soccer and community building, the Black Lives Matter movement, the power of social media, strengthening police relations in the community, and more! As our Bigs went around to each table and engaged with experts, these discussions began to spur ideas among our Bigs on how they can best apply this information to their future community projects.
Special thanks to all of our special guests who shared their wisdom and experiences with our high school Bigs! These guests include:
Mrs. Daneea Badio-McCray, Marietta Police Athletic League Exec. Director, and Sergeant Cliff Kelkerwith the Cobb County Sheriff Department: Strengthening police + community relations
Dr. Folami Prescott Adams, CEO of HTI Catalysts: Black Lives Matter and Listening 4 Justice
Jason Longshore, Commentator for Atlanta United FC: Soccer and Community Building
Kevin Keefe, Engineer at Emory University: Transit and People-Centered Community
DeyStegall, founder of ‘Pour Girls’: The Power of Social Media
We look forward to the passion projects our Bigs create and how they will make a lasting difference for our Franklin Gateway Community alongside their Littles!
The Match Party!
Finally the big day came when our Bigs and Littles would learn their official mentoring matches! The Match Party is a big deal, and Ms. Brittany wanted the kids to feel that energy the second they walked in the room. The theme of the party this year was Fear Factor: scattered around The Radisson were different stations, each with a challenge that our mentoring kids had to complete in order to receive a clue that would bring them a step closer to uncovering their mentoring matches!
“This year was the first year of really upping the ante and building the suspense!” Ms. Brittany said. “And not only that, Brandon (a Little), bless his heart, back in 2019 he left a message in our suggestion box and I never let it go: less talking, more games. These kids come here on Tuesday ready to experience something. I have been told over the years that ‘Tuesday’s my favorite day of the week’ or ‘I love mentoring’ or ‘Ms Brittany what we doing this year?’ It’s an excitement that they have about this program, and I can’t let them down, right? I wanted them to be as fear factored and pushed to the limits and build as much suspense as possible. So Match Day happened.”
And pushed to the limits they were! Each challenge was an opportunity for our Bigs and Littles to jump out of their comfort zone and demonstrate to each other the characteristics needed to thrive in the Mentoring Program. Being a risk-taker, going above and beyond for your tribe, uplifting each other to achieve a shared goal; all of this was on display as Bigs and Littles navigated the Fear Factor course. But above all else, Ms. Brittany wanted the Bigs and Littles to have fun and make lasting memories as they progressed through each station together.
Some of the challenges they faced included sticking their arm into mystery boxes filled with slimy substances to fish out clues, or a blind taste testing that pushed our youth to try things they normally wouldn’t. It was beautiful chaos as our Bigs and Littles started completing the challenges and getting messy in the process! At times there were some Bigs who were hesitant towards some of the challenges, and wondered why they were being put through these obstacles. At first, Ms. Brittany took this as a sign that the Match Party wasn’t achieving its intended purpose of bringing Littles and Bigs together. But in reflecting on this, she soon saw it as a valuable teaching moment for everyone.
“I had to let myself sit with the realization that I did nothing but let them know ‘Hey you got a goal. The goal is to find this person that you’ve been looking for since you joined this organization, how are you going to get to it?’ The same thing is going to come when we begin to tackle service projects. This is the goal this day, this time, this place. How are you going to get to it?” Ms. Brittany recalled. “I’m giving them nothing but what life is going to throw at them. And I’m hoping that the mindset of this, even outside of YELLS, applies and they get it. So once I stepped back and really thought about the magic that was born at the Match Party, I thought it was great.”
As Bigs and Littles made their way across the finish line, it was heartwarming to see the excitement in the kids’ faces as they finally uncovered their mentoring matches! Many of the Bigs and Littles had developed strong friendships even before the Match Party, so to see their expectations of who they would be matched with realized was a special thing. The rest of the match party was just that: a party! Matches took fun pictures together and played different games to bond and get to know each other and celebrate their new mentoring relationships.
Every step along the Mentoring Program journey this year provided valuable moments that our mentoring kids can learn from in order to tackle their community projects. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted so much of the work that our mentoring kids were striving for in the past, so this upcoming year really feels like a pivotal moment for our youth as far as developing their mentoring bonds and achieving their service project goals. For some, the desire to succeed has been lit for a while now.
“There’s a fire that’s lit from returning Bigs from 2019. Returning Bigs are like, ‘we want to do this and we want it now!'” Ms. Brittany said. “We have a senior that’s been here since 2019 and she loves this program. She wants this for herself. She wants to know that she did this. She knows she has a group working with her, and they’ve always gotten these bits and pieces. We’ll talk about projects, and we’ll start working on them. But she knows all of this stuff, and she wants to bust this thing out so bad!”
This year, our Bigs and Littles are planning to organize two amazing community projects! The first is a single mothers event aimed at supporting single mothers in the community by connecting them with local resources, as well as building a network of mothers willing to support and uplift each other when needed! We are beyond proud of our Bigs for having the awareness and empathy to think of the mothers of our community in this way, and we are excited to see the impact that this event will have in Franklin Gateway.
The second event is the Franklin Fair! The Franklin Fair is an annual celebration of the local community that sees Franklin Gateway residents come together to eat culturally diverse dishes from local restaurants and play fun carnival games with family and neighbors! These community events are a thoughtful and honest reflection of the kids within our mentoring program, and we’re immensely proud of the work they’ve done so far, and also of the work yet to come. Currently, the Bigs are working on drafting proposal letters to connect with partners that can help provide all the resources and materials to make their events a success! For Ms. Brittany, to see all of this come to fruition would mean the world for her and the youth in this program.
“My goal this year, I really want the double cherry on top,” she says. “I want to put on the service projects, I want to see that happen. I want to see myself at the Franklin Fair with the flash mob that I’ve been hoping to do since 2019. Me sitting in a chair, sitting back eating a hot dog and having a slushy. I want to see them smile and be able to say ‘yeah, we did that y’all, period.’ I want to hear that type of fellowship be able to happen. But the same mission still continues is that I’m helping build strong, positive, knowing-how-to-protect-their-peace young people.”
“I want to see this program come out of my hands and fall into the hands of the teenagers. I want the Littles to feel like they really have a friend in these Bigs. And I feel like that’s happening. I just want us to keep having a good time. That’s what I really, really want. And if I know that the positive feedback is Tuesday’s their favorite day, as long as Tuesday continues to be their favorite day, I feel like I’m winning. I feel like the program is winning.”
At the end of the day, YELLS is nothing without the partnerships that support our mission. We are successful in serving our youth because we have incredible partners that help us facilitate our programs, provide invaluable resources, and who truly buy into the principles that we aim to instill in the children of Franklin Gateway. This month we would like to spotlight a valuable new partner that has been instrumental in consistently providing a space for the YELLS Mentoring Program to meet weekly, organize their community projects, and grow their mentoring relationships: The Radisson Hotel Atlanta-Marietta and their Director of Sales and Marketing, Richard Leon!
Before working at the Radisson, Richard crossed paths with YELLS once before, having been invited to volunteer with us by his good friend and YELLS Board Member, George O’Donnell. “It was just kind of spot projects here and there, like painting the interior of your building over there, again with a friend of mine who was on the board. And so he’s like, ‘Richard, come on, let’s do some painting!’” (Photo/Dito Montaña)
Earlier this fall and with a week to go until the Mentoring Program was set to begin, we were informed that our usual meeting space was no longer available to use. Throughout that week our staff scrambled to find a place in our community for the Mentoring Program kids to gather temporarily until more secure accommodations were made, and in this endeavor, our Executive Director, Laura Keefe, was put into contact with Richard Leon, the Director of Sales and Marketing at the Radisson Hotel just off Franklin Gateway, to see if he could help solve this urgent problem.
“Under new management, one of our primary goals was to establish ourselves as an anchor in the Franklin Gateway community to restore its reputation to be a great neighbor,” Richard said. “And I know this is a cliche, but it was kind of a win-win situation. Laura needed a place, I was looking toward having some type of involvement that helps the community, and that’s what this is.”
Richard Leon, a native New Yorker who came down to Georgia over 14 years ago with his family, has been working in the hotel business for almost 30 years, the majority of that time with Marriott International. Richard joined the Radisson in late August, three months after the hotel was purchased by Veteran Service USA, and was tasked with revitalizing the hotel’s reputation in the community. When Laura approached him with the idea of hosting the Mentoring Program at the Radisson, Richard was able to secure one of their conference rooms for YELLS to use, and what started as a temporary arrangement quickly became an established meeting place for the kids in that program! The initial agreement was until the end of the 2021 year, but The Radisson extended their offer until at least until the end of March!
“I see all the great work that YELLS is doing in the community. And you know, this is really not empty praise, YELLS does important work in the community with our youth,” Richard said. “Being in the hotel industry as I have been for so many years, it’s ingrained in me, it’s kind of in my culture, that if you’re not helping the customer, you’re supporting the people who are helping the customer. So if you’re not directly helping kids in the community in Franklin Gateway, then you should be supporting the people who are. So that’s something I’m pretty passionate about.”
Especially as we navigate our programs during the pandemic, it has been vitally important that our kids have a consistent place to grow their mentoring relationships, and The Radisson has hosted some pretty memorable moments so far for our Bigs and Littles! During the first few weeks of this year’s Mentoring Program, the Bigs helped Littles with their homework, they played games that challenged them to grow in their leadership, and together they brainstormed some truly thoughtful community projects that will teach them to be servant leaders for the Franklin Gateway community! Most notably, The Radisson hosted our Match Party, the big day where Bigs and Littles were matched together through a series of “Fear Factor” challenges scattered throughout the hotel, and since then it’s been so heartwarming to see these relationships growing every week! Our Bigs are learning to be leaders by guiding their Littles through life, and in turn our Littles can turn to their Bigs for support, advice, and motivation. Thanks to The Radisson, our Bigs and Littles are able to focus on building these mentoring relationships without the worry of figuring out where they are going to meet that week.
The Radisson has undergone several changes in ownership over the years, with Commonwealth Hospitality assuming management of the property in May of 2021. Richard said he has a vision of how he sees the Radisson cementing itself as a good neighbor on Franklin Gateway while increasing business for the hotel.
“Well, I see us growing by partnering with other businesses in the community. I have attended some of the Franklin Gateway Community Improvement District meetings and just partnered with them to offer our hotel as lodging options, meeting options, events options. Fill the hotel is my job, get the hotel busy, get foot traffic in here.” (Photo by Dito Montaña)
Anyone involved in YELLS who knows Richard can attest to the fact that he’s been up to bat for the Mentoring Program time and time again. His passion for hospitality as well as the Radisson’s ongoing generosity is evident every time our Bigs and Littles step into that space. We’re very grateful for how this unexpected partnership has blossomed into one of the most directly impactful resources for our Mentoring Program kids. As this partnership grows, Richard remains optimistic about the Radisson’s continued support of YELLS and its mission.
“We’re very proud of the partnership that we’ve shared with YELLS. It’s been a short relationship of only three months now, and we look forward to going into 2022 with that same effort, with that same relationship and just growing and strengthening it,” Richard said. “Because as I mentioned before, we feel as though YELLS is a very important part of the community for mentoring our youth. And I know this also sounds like a cliche, but the youth are the future of this area. And to help them now only helps all of us in the future.”
Thank you, Richard and The Radisson Hotel, for believing in our Franklin Gateway youth!
YELLS has been a medium where I can actively change a life, and actively manipulate my own life to be what I want it to be.
Ana, YELLS Big
The way people see you changes when you help them address a problem in the community.
Ashami
YELLS allowed me to see that all people have something to offer.
Imani, YELLS Big
The kids out here [on Franklin Road] are all looking for a better future, and we help them find that better future.
Ashami, Hospitality and Service Team Member
Because we learn about the community [from community members] we are more knowledgeable about the needs of the community.
Tori
I take everything I learned from YELLS everywhere I go. Your vision is truly being lived out through students like me.
Jonah, YELLS Big
At [the Community Action Café] we get people who sacrifice so much for us, and that motivates us to help those around us.
Tori
It makes you feel good to give back.
Devin
When we first came to America we were timid. When we came to YELLS my mentality changed… YELLS has helped me to keep my family together and organized. Taking care of kids by YELLS is wonderful!
