Building Brighter Futures, One Book at a Time
By Abi Bloomfield, Kayla Mattera and Malchiah Lewis
Eagerness mixed with uncertainty best describes how we felt when entering Wake Forest’s College LAUNCH for Leadership Program. As scholars meeting monthly for Saturday Summits, we were challenged to identify community issues we were passionate about and to learn about social justice. What began with completing a Google form to gauge our social justice interests turned into a meaningful Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Project. Enter us: Abi, David, Kayla and Malchiah, teenagers with a desire to improve access to education in our community. We used each session to propel us forward in our yearlong education oriented YPAR project. We initiated it by researching educational disparities affecting literacy, particularly for marginalized members of our community, while looking for a community partner, which was encouraged to maximize our impact.
Never underestimate a plan B: one major thing we learned. After being hit with silence from a potential community partner with an important deadline approaching, we were stuck like a train on broken tracks. Wanting to make a difference in our community, we decided to switch our plan to book drives. After pivoting, we were able to find Promising Pages: a non-profit dedicated to increasing book access in the Charlotte community for under-resourced children. Within a day of emailing them, we secured a strong community partner for our project—the train was back on track.
After finishing the research portion, we moved on to collecting the books to aid our community partner. Our final Saturday Summit arrived and we were prepared to present our research findings on the impact of educational disparities during the gallery walk and graduate from College LAUNCH.
Even with graduation behind us, we were committed to fully completing our YPAR project. As a group, we were able to collect 864 books through book drives at our schools and word of mouth.
While this project required a great deal of hard work, none of this would have been possible without the support provided by College LAUNCH. Through this project, not only were we able to provide books to children in our community, but we also strengthened our team work and communication skills. In other words, our project helped the Charlotte community while leaving an impact on us. By working together to ensure a successful pivot when plan A did not come to fruition, we effectively completed the ultimate group project: YPAR.
Thank you to all who donated or supported us along the way. And if you are thinking about applying to the LAUNCH for Leadership Program, you will not regret it!