JaylenHello to all! My name is Jayden and I’m a member of the Charlotte cohort of Wake Forest University’s College LAUNCH for Leadership program. During our December Saturday Summit, we discussed a lot of useful information. We discussed topics surrounding college, community service, and social justice. We started the day learning about families who live in “book deserts”, which means having limited access to books. Did you know that access to books is one of the top indicators of future academic success for children?  To try to help combat this issue, College LAUNCH partnered with Promising Pages by making hand-designed bookmarks that will be delivered with the books that Promising Pages deliver to families in our community. 

 After we finished our community service project, we heard from a panel of four College LAUNCH Alumni who came to talk with us about the first semester as a college freshman. They discussed making their college decision and what the admission process is like. A key point during that portion was choosing the college that fits you and where you can personally thrive. We also discussed life on a college campus, including the academic and social aspects of college. I was actually surprised by the honesty of our conversations because most of the time, things like responsibly adjusting to the social aspect of college are not openly discussed. In my opinion, the most impactful part of the panel was when the LAUNCH Alumni discussed their experiences as minorities on predominantly white college campuses, including challenges, resources, and how to find community.

To end the day, we started on our YPAR Project, which is the Youth Participatory Action Research Project. We were able to meet our team members to collaborate. My group and I are exploring the social justice topic of Colorism. We worked on our outline of the project and were able to get an understanding of our next steps. I always enjoy coming to our LAUNCH Saturday Summits to learn more about pressing issues in the world and how to best prepare for college.

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