Photo provided Freddie King speaks with students at Foundation for Youth.
Photo provided Freddie King speaks with students at Foundation for Youth.
Youth ambassadors from the Council for Youth Development (CYD) have been hard at work preparing for this week.
CYD will be hosting its annual Youth Empowerment Summit on Friday at the Air Park Columbus Campus from 8:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m.
The 20 youth ambassadors in grades 10-12 help put the event together, choosing seminar topics and speakers.
CYD Youth Empowerment Coordinator Freddie King said the idea of the summit is to help inspire the next generation of leaders by encouraging them to be involved with their community and educated on different topics that they’re interested in related to their personal growth.
The day starts off with a keynote speaker and then the group will break out into three different sessions. The session topics this year delve into mental health, leadership, individuality, accountability and stress management to name a few.
Jose Olivo, an executive account manager at Cummins and the head volleyball coach at IU Columbus, will be talking about accountability in leadership, Olener Bennett, firector of student success and belonging at Ivy Tech, will talk about individuality during her session, “Puzzle Pieces of Me,” and Skye Nicholson, founder of Soul’s Truth Coaching, will discuss strategies for stress management and coping skills in her session, “CHILL DOWN.”
The 100 high schoolers in Bartholomew County who applied will attend the summit. This year, CYD received applications from more than 160 students, about 30 more than the previous year’s event, King said. CYD used a lottery system to land on the 100 set to attend, but are also looking at expanding the number of students who can attend next year.
Organizers said 44% of the student applicants were people of color, one of the more diverse pools of applicants CYD has had.
“That’s a pretty big percentage, which is really exciting,” King said.
Sara Hobbeheydar, a junior at North, is in her first year as a youth ambassador. She applied at the beginning of 2023 and began working with CYD in the summer. Getting more involved and meeting kids her age who wanted to do the same is what Hobbeheydar cites as her motivation for joining.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Columbus North Social Studies teacher Chad Russell, who Hobbeheydar happens to have for AP U.S. History (APUSH).
“I have Mr. Russell for APUSH quite early in the morning,” Hobbeheydar said. “We all kind of agreed that he is just a really good speaker, he is very captivating, he’s very good at telling stories, he has a lot of energy. And I think that he would be a good person to get everyone motivated for a day of learning.”
The ambassadors hope to use the event to connect youth with resources around the community “like scholarships opportunities, internship opportunities, job opportunities — we invite community booths to come talk to people and make them aware of the resources we have in our community,” Hobbeheydar said.
Foundation for Youth, Columbus Parks & Recreation, Columbus IN Pride and local the NAACP branch will be some of the groups there to share information.
Hobbeheydar said the ambassadors wanted to include topics related to mental health and leadership because the two can go hand-in-hand.
“Just because we know you can’t really give back to your community unless your 100% yourself,” Hobbeheydar said.
Youth Ambassador Varshika Loganath Siva is a junior at North.
She read about CYD online and ventured to join, bringing with her experiences she has had as a member of the city’s Asian community that she wanted to share.
“They had a really accepting team— Tim (Green) and Freddie (King) did the best they could to listen to our ideas and really just bring them to life,” Siva said. “They basically give us a platform to voice our ideas and what we want to do for our community.”
The group chose purple and pink shirts for the event with an astrological feel, inspired by last week’s total solar eclipse.
Siva said she is eager to see so many like-minded students in one place.
“One thing with teens is, it’s hard to get their attention for a long time,” Siva said. “And I’m so excited to take a group of individuals that signed up themselves and decided, ‘Hey, I want to want to be apart of this.’ They decided to come and take the initiative themselves.”
The ambassadors began planning in earnest for the summit “a couple of months ago,” Hobbeheydar said.
“That’s when myself and the other youth ambassadors, we start planning the events, we kind of talked about the key things that we feel like we want to experience as high schoolers and the areas we feel, as a group, can improve on.”
Individuality is a topic the summit will touch on that resonates for Siva.
“It seems like you really need to figure out what your place is in society in the four years of high school, when it’s really a time all of us want to have fun,” Siva said. “And it’s not getting any less competitive, it’s getting more competitive— and so all of us are kind of on the racetrack figuring out, ‘What’s unique about me? How can I make myself stand out?’”
All of the youth ambassadors have a penchant for collaborating and building relationships, Siva said.
“Wherever you’re going to go in life, it’s important that you network with people, and you know how to maintain a relationship. All of us enjoy talking to each other, collaborating, bringing ideas to the table. I feel like that’s just what has made us a strong ambassador team.”
