The Youth in Action Story

Youth In Action began eight years ago, when Al had a group that wanted to help the community.  Al’s group volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, but weren’t as involved as they wanted to be; they wanted to build handicapped ramps and paint houses for those in need.  Al had a fellow Community Church parishioner who knew someone who needed her home painted.  She volunteered to supply the materials and lunch for the kids.  Al contacted Richard, who had his own youth group, and they joined forces to do the work; 35 teens painted the first house.

After that first success, Al and Richard decided to get all area churches involved.  Youth In Action has grown to three one-day work projects each year, with 150-200 teens and 40-50 adults participating, to repair and paint 6-7 houses each workday.  Funding comes from private donations, and Community Church, Holy Cross, St. Helen’s, Our Savior, and Christ by the Sea, which donate money.

There is no formal group structure.  Al and Richard founded Youth In Action to keep their youth groups involved and helping the community; they split the work between them, relying on volunteers to help make phone calls, supervise, and help in any way.

Our mission is for . . . Youth groups from area churches to come together to share their time, talents, and resources in order to fix up homes that are in disrepair, homes that the owners are unable to fix up themselves.

Our goal . . . Is to plan and execute three one-day work projects per year.

The criteria for choosing the homes . . . Is that the  house is in great need of repair and repainting.

The people served must own their own home and be a resident of Indian River County.  They must have no other means of repairing and/or repainting their home.

PROCESS FOR YOUTH GRANTING WISHES

Once a year, we pick a particular area in a community that we think should be emphasized as far as the need.

We will go out and interview all those people who have special needs.

We search out the  type of needs we are able to grant. Some needs that we have been successful in granting are home repairs, handicap ramps, helping organizations that deal with the poor maintain their facilities, and helping people in removing trash from around and in their homes.

Another area that we are looking at is providing an opportunity for our youth to improve the general community in any way requested us such as hurricane debris clean-up.

The way this is done is that we invite all of the area church’s youth groups through e-mail that we are meeting and if they’d like to be a part of us this particular year; then they come and meet with us.  We require that the youth groups provide their own supervision, a minimum of 1 person per 6 students.

When they make a commitment to review the site that they choose (or we help them choose) that they will be working on, their people know what is expected of them when they arrive.

We also request that they help us with the money that is needed for these repairs.

Another component is that at 10:30 a.m. every workday, we divide youths in groups of 6-8 and to process different aspects of their FAITH, or about what’s happening on that day  and their desire to make a difference in their lives.

Another final aspect of our Youth In Action is that we have the Kiwanis Club, who constantly provide men to mentor the youth, contribute a celebration and lunch.  They cook a wonderful lunch and provide hospitality for us that we can count on.