Background:
We Lead Ours (WELO) were established in 2010 to provide youth with education, sports, leadership, and community service enrichment opportunities. WELO’s provided youth with real life learning experiences by providing youth with career exploration field-trips, service learning projects, after-school programs, specialty physical education camps, summer camps, community service, and sch
ool based physical education programs. We Lead Ours has successfully provided youth with three successful community summer fun day camps in the San Francisco Bay Area. WELO has served as a daytime subcontractor physical education service provider at Reach Academy. We Lead Ours have provided youth with leadership, gardening, and physical education programs at Reach Academy After-School Program since 2010. Before becoming a subcontractor organization within the Oakland Unified School District WELO provided families with enrichment activities through community picnics, Saturday Youth Leadership Club, and specialty sporting camps. We Lead Ours have served as an Alameda County Food Bank Distributor to support families in need of emergency food resources. We Lead Ours a community based program focuses on building partnerships with other organizations in effort to focus on the role of community. WELO has taken youth on field trips to Google, Bart, and Cal-Trans local headquarters to focus on career exploration. WELO has partnered with all of Oakland’s national sporting teams allowing youth to participate in local sporting events to the Raiders, Athletics, and Warriors home games. We Lead Ours long term goals are to continue establishing WELO as a community based organization that focus on community service, health, physical education, green projects, youth leadership, and academic development. WELO has worked with the American Heart Association, Alameda County Soda Free Summer Program, and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to allow youth to participate in service learning programs that focus on health awareness. Mission:
We Lead Ours mission is to provide at risk youth in underserved areas with an extended day learning program that will provide them with educational, enrichment, civic leadership, and sports and fitness programs. While integrating adult programs into the community that focus on college preparation, job readiness, health education, and financial literacy. Vision:
We Lead Ours (WELO) vision is to become a community based organization that offers year-round services for youth and adults. WELO plan to have a building that serves as the program headquarters in order to have space to host after-school programs, summer camps, sports camps, and adult learning workshops. WELO envisions an organization that is driven through partnerships, service learning, and enrichment. Value Statement:
We Lead Ours value a community that is producing civic leaders that are thinking outside the box and becoming three dimensional thinkers. Organizations Pledge:
Affiliates must have the leadership to gain the direction to become confident and compassionate about their daily presentations; while being health conscious and learning to take ownership for their lives while having the willpower to become knowledgeable about their success. Language of Leaders Institute Overview
The Language of Leaders Institute (LOLI) is an extended day learning program for youth during out of school hours. Youth that participates in the LOLI will participate in an array of enrichment services (gardening, culinary arts, STEM, civic leadership, foreign language, media arts, poetry, dance, stepping, health, and team sports). LOLI will allow youth to work with different community organizations that provide youth development services and outreach. Youth will have the opportunity to participate in special presentations with community leaders to provide youth with a real-world learning experience. Youth that are enrolled in LOLI will participate in fieldtrips to colleges, museums, agricultural outpost, state/local parks, and sporting events. WELO value youth leadership and will implement an after-school camp experience at a local park that focus on youth development while implementing a real-world experience for youth during out of school hours. Leaders in the program are determined based on the interaction with the group: managing relationships, earning trust, and taking initiative measure the student’s effectiveness as a leader (Bono, Gerhardt, Ilies, & Judge, 2002). Students work towards becoming authentic, charismatic, innovative, trustworthy, and approachable through the Language of Leaders Institute Raising the Bar Leadership Curriculum. Students brainstorm, plan, and create events that allow them to serve as school wide leaders to their peers, teachers, parents, and administrators. The goal is to allow students to develop transformational leadership skills by looking at their school and community as the situation (Denning, 2005). Students attending school in the United States may have access to enrichment programs after normal school hours. After-school Programs (APS’s) in the United States support families by providing students with extended day enrichment activities (Perrenoud, 2010). Parents consider ASP’s a necessity, because after-school programs provide structured activities for students while their parents are at work (Belle, 1999). Students attending Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Elementary After-School Programs (ASP’s) may often experience youth leadership as an enrichment course in ASP’s. Students participating in after-school leadership courses are involved in group activities that promote social interaction in a controlled setting (Mayseless, & Scharf, 2009). Youth Voice is the term used in youth development when students are provided the opportunity to speak out about issues or provide program suggestions (Weikart, 2011). Youth attending ASP’s in OUSD may participate in courses that provide students with the opportunity to speak out in peer groups and plan activities. Schools are ideal places for social-skills to develop due to youth exposure to multiple leadership opportunities (Mayseless, & Scharf, 2009). Research suggests that programs that establish youth volition or choice increases self-autonomy in youth (Ramsing, & Sibthorp, 2008). LOLI Raising the Bar Leadership Curriculum will be used to introduce youth to a real-world leadership experience while developing civic leadership skills. Youth of all ages are able to learn from the Raising the Bar Leadership Curriculum. WELO will use the Raising the Bar curriculum for weekend and other organizational youth leadership programs. The curriculum will introduce students to service learning, financial literacy, student government, health education, environmental services, and restorative justice concepts.
