Between January and April, the State Association partnered with a student from Washington State University to explore some of the ways our organization and our local Clubs can better engage youth voice in programming decisions and overall planning.
Tammy Ha, a sophomore at WSU, and current president of the International Student Council, is pursuing a double major in Psychology and Human Development, while working as an undergraduate research assistant at the IMPACT Lab, where she is focusing on finding preventative methods to address childhood adversity. During her internship at BGCWA, Tammy learned about Boys & Girls Clubs of America history and current programming initiatives. Tammy reached out to several other Youth Development organizations in WA, including School’s Out Washington, MentorWA, and YMCA’s Youth in Government to better understand models of youth voice inclusion throughout the field. Tammy then turned to expertise already present among WA’s Boys & Girls Clubs organizations and collected best practices that can be shared among our network of Clubs. Tammy’s findings and recommendations are pointing us to additional efforts to include our Club youth in WA State Youth of the Year planning, and later in 2024, we will once again form an all-teen WA Keystone Summit planning committee. The input and opinions of these teens will fully guide the summit planning, workshop, and keynote speaker candidate recruitment. Thank you, Tammy, for your hard work with us over the past 4 months, and congratulations on your internship scholarship award from BGCWA!