YOUNG LIFE

After watching some of my sophomore friends at Daniel High School play in their volleyball game.

Young Life is a Christian youth outreach program in which adults invest in the lives of high school students in order to build friendships and offer love and support through such a pivotal time in their life. My involvement in Young Life has taught me the value of investing in the lives of others, how to lead by example, as well as helped develop my organizational and planning skills.

Young Life Team Leader

As a Young Life leader, I invest 13-17 hours per week in the mentoring of Daniel High School students by offering personal support, leading camp trips, and organizing and planning weekly school-wide social events. For personal support, I spend time going to sporting events of my high school friends, taking them to breakfast, or helping them with homework after school. Through the friendship that forms, I am able to offer them personal life advice that I wish I had known at their age. We take a weekend camp trip in the winter and week-long camp trip each summer with students from Daniel, which I have accompanied every year. This involves strong leadership in order to keep the students involved and focused, as well as having fun. As the current team leader, I lead the camp trips of 30-100 high school students as well as plan weekly meetings for my team of 13 other college and adult volunteers to discuss ways to continue to lead effectively. Our team plans weekly events for Daniel students to come and have structured fun in a positive environment. My experiences as a Young Life leader and team leader have revealed my strong desire to care for others and improve their well-being through whatever means I have, as well as enhanced my ability to communicate with others of all ages.

Guest Services Intern: Ropes

I had the opportunity to spend the summer of 2015 working at a Young Life camp in Jasper, Georgia. My position as Guest Services Intern with a concentration on ropes gave me the responsibility of training each of the three groups of 12 volunteers on the safety and management our five Challenge Course elements. It was my job to make sure each element was run safely and efficiently, while also engaging with the high school campers who came through the camp. I also was in charge of leading my team in the preparation of morning activities and completing daily chores to help camp run efficiently and smoothly. In addition to my ropes responsibilities, my guest services job required me to help facilitate nightly camp events each week by being the liaison between the camp staff and the event host in order to meet the needs of both. Interactions with camp staff, ropes team, and campers enhanced my leadership ability and sharpened my communication and interpersonal skills.

To read more about my duties as a Ropes Intern and the mission of Young Life, click here.

The Daniel students that we took to week-long camp in Colorado this summer.