Regina YMCA Leaders Project

Celebrating youth and their diversities while giving them a platform on which to be heard

For our community action project, we decided to produce a book with pictures and quotes from our youth in our leadership program through the YMCA of Regina. Our leadership program is for youth in grades 4-12, and in our program, we try to provide our youth with a sense of responsibility and well-being. Our youth in our leadership program that were in grades 7-12 were given the opportunity to write a message or story to put in our book along with an attached picture of themselves, or an image they thought represented them. The book was then developed, and distributed to the youth who participated, to the library and other various community partners, as well as a copy was kept at our YMCA.

The youth were given some questions to consider before writing their message for the book. Some of the questions we asked were:

-What makes you who you are?

-Why do you come to the YMCA?

-Where are you from originally, or where is your family from?

-What would you like to pursue as a career when you’re older?

-What was the happiest or saddest day of your life?

-What hobbies do you have?

These questions we asked were to help the youth decide what they were going to write about. We explained to the youth that this book and what they chose to write about would give them the opportunity to be heard and a chance for them to celebrate their diversity.

We chose to do this project with our youth because we thought it was the perfect opportunity to raise awareness of the different youth we see come to the YMCA of Regina, and we also saw it as an opportunity to give our youth a platform to share their story and for their voices to be heard. We felt that youth in our community, and communities alike are typically not heard, and their perspective is often overlooked. Our book helped them to feel like what they say matters, and it also will help who ever reads the book to gain a deeper understanding of the youth in our community.

VIEW THE BOOK HERE!