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!
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
YELLS allowed me to see that all people have something to offer.
Imani, YELLS Big
I take everything I learned from YELLS everywhere I go. Your vision is truly being lived out through students like me.
Jonah, YELLS Big
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 kids don’t always talk about their day at school, but they always want to talk about their day at YELLS.
Tosha Freeman, Afterschool Program Parent
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!
Patience Ehehom, YELLS advocate since 2012
It makes you feel good to give back.
Devin
It’s all positive energy in here!
Devin, YELLS Graduate
Because we learn about the community [from community members] we are more knowledgeable about the needs of the community.
Tori
The way people see you changes when you help them address a problem in the community.
