West Sacramento Youth Leadership Retreat

Teenagers from West Sacramento met in September of 2006 at Collings Teen Center in West Sacramento for an overnight Youth Leadership Retreat. The event began at 6:00 pm Friday with pizza and soda, and continued until midnight with a “Point Break” workshop led by Teddi Pettee and Anthony Maiden from Campus Life Connections. The night ended with ice-cream and dancing until everyone fell asleep.

“Point Break” engaged nearly seventy-five teens aged twelve to seventeen, in coming together from all over West Sacramento to meet and learn about each other, find connection within their differences and share understanding about life difficulties they face. At the end of the evening many of the teens said the best thing they learned was that there are other young people who have experienced similar problems and who have felt the same emotions. In other words, they learned that they are not alone.

Bright and early the next morning, the kids woke up to face the next phase of their retreat. Judy Thornhill of CommuniCare Health Centers, who had stayed the night helping oversee the youth, also woke up and led a workshop asking the participants what strengths as well as problems they see in West Sacramento, and how they as young people would like to contribute to solutions. The youth were articulate in identifying drugs, gangs, pollution and racism as major problems; and their families, friends and the Teen Center as positives. In addition, they each voiced a way to make West Sacramento a better place to live.

Dave Dove and Loretta Bonilla of Collings Teen Center headed up coordination of this event, and also acted as small group facilitators.

CommuniCare Health Centers and Collings Teen Center, along with many other agencies and businesses, are part of West Sacramento’s Youth Resource Coalition, which recently received a REACH Community Action grant from Sierra Health Foundation to perform a community assessment in West Sacramento. Karen Larsen of CommuniCare is the program coordinator for the coalition. The retreat was used as a kick-off event for youth to take leadership roles in the coalition and in the community assessment. The assessment will focus on how to make the city a safer, healthier, more fun place for ten-to-fifteen-year-olds to live, while supporting their growth into creative, contributing members of the community.