We have such an amazing group of youth on our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board!
They are unstoppable in their civic leadership as they strive to make a difference for kids in need.
Each month we feature one child as a “Rising Star”.
For June, our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Rising Star award goes to Arianna. She is one of our founding members of our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Youth-led Advisory Board which formed in 2018.
Outside of her leadership role with Kidzz Helping Kidzz, Arianna is principal second violin in the Kitsap Philharmonic, a member “Our GEMS”, a children’s Church Volunteer, a Math tutor, a WEB leader helping new 6th grade students be more comfortable at Middle School, and she orients new students as part of her leadership role in A4L. This summer, Arianna will also be performing in The Music Man.
Each summer, we host a Kidzz Helping Kidzz Annual retreat for our Advisory Board of Youth where we discuss important topics of interest. This evening we discussed the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within our organization.
We reviewed our original official statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion which our Advisory Board developed in 2020.
We discussed how we seek to acknowledge, embrace, support, and accept those from all racial, sexual, gender, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, among other differentiators.
We also discussed the concept of belonging and noted that no matter the difference, we want to make all people feel welcome.
Our retreat was also an important time for our youth to come together to celebrate our successes and have some fun! Some of that fun included breaking out into games.
One of those games involved hard boiled eggs. Kidzz had to place an egg on a spoon and race your opponent down to a bowl 20 feet away without dropping the egg.
Then “gently” place your hard boiled egg into the bowl (without a crack). Then quickly pick it up again with the spoon and get back to tag the next person in your group to go. Turned out to be a tie.
Next, we played Tug of War using an official ‘Tug of War’ rope donated to us from Brownsville Elementary school. The girls beat the boys in both rounds! Go girls!
Then we then played Musical chairs—always a favorite of the youth on our Advisory Board. I think we played at least 3 rounds before the kids were ready to move on.
Our final game of the retreat involved building a structure using only raw spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. We divided into two teams—boys vs. the girls. The team with the highest structure after 15 minutes—wins.
After enjoying pizza, chips, fruit and veggies… Cake, brownies and cookies… We finally decided to call it a night. Everyone had a lot of fun.
During July and August, our Advisory Board will take a much needed hiatus until regrouping again in September—for our toy drive—our biggest event of the year for us all.
Please consider supporting our 2023 toy drive in the littlest way by simply volunteering some time.
Contact us here for more information about volunteering.
To make a toy donation or monetary donation, please visit our Contribute page here.
Thank you! We can’t wait to help brighten the lives of families with you!
Leave a Comment below if you have any questions about any of the topics mentioned in today's blog post.
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