How does leadership and skills training/programming positively impact youth?

Wyoming Afterschool Alliance
Today’s students need a robust learning environment where they are empowered to realize their full potential. With true collaboration among after school and summer programs, schools, and community partners, we can meet the needs of kids and families today—and forge a new future where every child is cared for, included, educated, and inspired.

WYAA is a partner of the Million Girls Moonshot, a national program seeking to re-imagine who can engineer, who can build, who can make. Together, we are working to inspire and prepare the next generation of innovators by engaging girls in learning opportunities through after-school and summer programs. WYAA’s MakeHER Scholars program used resources from the University of Wyoming Coe Student Innovation Center and Albany County 4-H to engage after-school program leaders in new ways to inspire young people to see themselves as makers, an important aspect of building a STEM identity. This was an especially useful strategy for educators who would not have considered themselves science or maker-oriented.

One example was Emily Haver, Carbon County 4-H Youth Development Educator. Emily explained that she saw the importance of STEM education in 4-H but knew that she needed to develop her own engineering mindset. Through MakeHER, Emily was able to practice these skills. After exploring MakeHER, Emily hosted two workshops with the Boys and Girls Club of Carbon County in Rawlins. She now feels empowered to expand STEM offerings through her 4-H programming and beyond. Emily said, “We all used to be makers, and we can all be makers again. And then, just encouraging girls to fail. Try, try; fail, fail; try again. It’s the incapable part that the maker movement works to totally demolish. If you believe you are capable, you are automatically less vulnerable to outside dissenting voices and natural obstacles. You don’t succeed unless you fail a few times first.”

SkillsUSA
I have personally watched this program change lives as well as silence the noise of non-traditional career pathways. Our [Career and Technical Education] CTE teachers in Wyoming are preparing our future workforce. SkillsUSA is also in these classrooms providing leadership training and opportunities while celebrating a student's technical skills every step of the way.

GAP!
Early adolescence is a fraught time for girls. The negative impacts of social media start showing up in late elementary school, which is why we start building relationships with girls long before middle school. Girls' self-esteem often drops by 30% in middle school, and they are bombarded daily with social media messages that challenge their self-esteem, body image, and peer relationships. According to CDC data released this spring, nearly 3 out of 5 of America's teen girls felt persistently sad in 2021, a nearly 60% increase and the highest level reported in the past decade. The number of girls experiencing sexual violence has increased at least 20% since 2017. The impact of GAP! Is best expressed by the girls themselves: “GAP! really helped me, kind of like, understand that when they say ‘you run like a girl,’ you don’t have to take that as an insult. You can take it as a compliment because you are a girl and girls are awesome.” Or “GAP! is a safe place to tell your emotions.” Or “I used to care what people think about my clothes and what I wore and everything about me, but now I can embrace it."