The M.I.N.D Project – A Reflection on Successful Service-Learning
By Christian Buonfiglio, Guest Writer Before graduating from the Foundation Academies’ Collegiate Academy, a public charter school in Trenton, New Jersey, each student must take a Civic Service-Learning course. Though the course is facilitated by English teacher Colleen DiDonato, the students, who are all in their junior or senior year, develop their service-learning projects together. This year, students from the course have led a service-learning project that has changed the lives of their fellow students -- and changed the school itself. One group of artists, athletes, and young leaders, led by then-junior Nomy Yanes-Castro, all saw the same need in [...]
Reflecting on the Youth Leadership Summit on Education Equity
By Talia Yohai, Guest Writer Participating in the 2020 Youth Leadership Summit by NYLC taught me a lot about the importance of leadership and service learning in order to address issues regarding education inequity all over the world. In this conference, I had the chance to talk to many teenagers from many different parts of the world that wanted to come up with solutions to the education inequity in their own situations. Talking to these very different people, I realized that for many people, education inequity is seen more in terms of the diversity and the intersectionality of the students. Meanwhile [...]
Equity in Education During COVID-19
Imagine all students starting their school days by eating a healthy breakfast, then jumping on their laptops to connect with their teachers through Google Classroom, then Facetiming with fellow students to complete their group projects. Imagine all parents knowing that their children are receiving the best educations despite classrooms having been moved from school buildings to living rooms. Imagine every teacher equipped with the training and knowledge to ensure that every student has the opportunity to succeed. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for many students across the United States. Issues of equity become readily apparent when students go hungry [...]
Connecting Girls Across the World to Change the World
By Christian Buonfiglio, Guest Writer Daisy Leonard and her sisters, Coco and Sunny, have problems of global importance to solve. Racial and religious hatred, the decline in the mental health of young people, and the marginalization of girls drove them to create Dynamic Champions of Sisterhood, an online reading club that connects girls from all over the world to help them build confidence, challenge old ideas, and change the world. The Leonard sisters created DCS with funding provided by the Points of Light Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to engaging with people from all walks of life to help the world [...]
Twenty Teams Receive Project Ignition Grants to Promote Safer, Smarter Driving
ST. PAUL, Minn. (August 19, 2019) – Coordinated by the National Youth Leadership Council® and funded by The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, Project Ignition has selected 20 teams from throughout the United States to receive $1,000 service-learning teen driver safety grants in 2019. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, auto crashes are the number one cause of death for teens in this country. Project Ignition is a youth-led response that connects academic goals to address the issue of teen driver safety through service-learning. The grants will support student-designed and student-led campaigns aimed at preventing car crashes in their community. “Young people [...]
Talking Turkey
By: Amy Meuers, NYLC CEO I had the honor to speak at the Japanese Conference on Philanthropic Education on Saturday, March 17 at Komazawa University, Tokyo. Japan has placed great emphasis on peace education ever since WWII including the incorporation of it in their 9th grade civics classes and in their constitution under Article 9. My participation in the conference was to share how service-learning is a way for students to be active participants in their own education. My desire was to show that when students discover the positive impact they can have in the world – that is when the [...]