Since the program started in 1995, hundreds of men and women have graduated from Leadership Santa Maria Valley. Now, local teenagers get their chance.
The first class of Teen Leadership Santa Maria Valley—33 teens total—has been chosen. With no GPA requirement and no tuition costs for the students, the leadership program could accept every teen who applied.
“We wanted it to be available to any teen in the community,” said Cary Gray, founder and chair of the program.
Gray, with Jim Simmons, started the original Leadership Santa Maria Valley, and he and others familiar with the program have wanted to start a teen version for years, he said. Finally, Gray decided to just do it. He focused on the project and—in only six months—got it up and running.
Applicants turned in their paperwork last April, and on Sept. 13 and 14, they attended their first leadership event: an orientation weekend that took the students to Camp San Luis for leadership training and the Chumash Challenge course at Cal Poly for team bonding.
“We just had a blast,” Gray said. “They bonded so well.”
At the Chumash Challenge, the teens learned to cooperate with each other during different challenges, including a ropes course. That’s something that stood out as a difference between the teen and adult leadership programs, Gray said.
“The kids have much more energy, they’re a little more limber and athletic than we are,” Gray said.
So no ropes course for the adults, but Gray—and other past leadership graduates, including Jim and Susan West—was on hand to help the kids through the process. The teen program is modeled after the adult program, with a few changes.
For one, the kids don’t have to pay for a thing. Gray received a grant from United Way to pay for the program and is also seeking donations to raise another $8,000 to $12,000 to pay for the rest. He said it would cost $650 per student for the yearlong process.
Between now and their graduation from the program, the teens—a mix of students from every high school in the area, plus home-schooled teens—will attend a series of day-long seminars. The teens range in grade level between sophomores and seniors in high school.
The first seminar will be on Oct. 17 on the topic of Health and Human Services. Participants will start the day with an hour of leadership training, Gray said. Then they’ll take a tour of the Red Cross, go to the Good Samaritan shelter for lunch, visit the Santa Barbara County Foodbank and Santa Maria Valley Humane Society Animal Shelter, and then attend a panel discussion with local nonprofits.
Between now and May, the teens will attend seven more seminars on subjects such as law and government, military and aerospace, and regional economics, to name a few. They’ll also complete projects based on the seminars in groups of two or three.
Mixing up the kids in projects and groups is all part of the program—the adult groups do it, too.
“We mix them up so many times so they’re constantly being shifted out of their comfort group,” Gray said.
By the end of the program, he expects that all of the teens will have grown and learned a lot about the community and themselves. Then it’ll be the next group’s turn. Applications for the 2009 class will be available in April.
This week’s Community Corner was compiled by Sports Editor Sarah E. Thien. Items for consideration should be sent to mail@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 18-25, 2008.