Know Yourself for YOUth

Annette Evans Wilson taught English in high school for 20 years in a low income, inner city high school where she discovered what held students back was a lack of knowledge of who they are and what they are capable of.

As she began to integrate identity & leadership skills into her classroom, she saw students develop skills that carried into their families, school, and community. After retiring, she developed YOU Life Skills and Leadership as a three-tiered program to continue helping adolescents develop the skills embodied by the YOU program which sought to teach each participant to:

Lead Yourself: Students develop the ability to lead themselves through understanding and valuing who they are and what makes them special and unique as individuals. They learn to make values-based decisions that affect changes within their own lives.

Reach Outward: By identifying what inspires them about the values and qualities within themselves, students are able to value the differences in others. Reaching out into their families, peer groups, and schools, they are able to make values-based decisions that affect changes which honor not only their values, but the values of those around them.

Seek to Understand: As students develop confidence in themselves, learn to value the individuality of others, and work with people of all backgrounds, they are prepared to see the needs within their communities, seek to understand those needs, and search out solutions, thus enabling them to affect change within the greater world around them.

Your donation provides at-risk youth with the opportunity to learn these important leadership skills.