A senior from Palmdale, Lindsey speaks from long experience, young though she is. In her junior and senior years at Lancaster High School, she looked after children at a battered women’s shelter. On her own initiative, she started an animal rights refuge as her senior project and volunteered for that as well.
A freshman at HSU in Fall 2004, Lindsey signed up right away with Youth Educational Services (Y.E.S.), which will celebrate its 40th anniversary on Saturday, April 26th. She is a devotee of Hand-in-Hand, the Y.E.S. program that provides engaging group activities for local children in foster care and those who have adoptive families. Volunteers provide parents with rest time, taking children on outings and involving them in a multitude of arts and crafts, games, food-making, sports and outdoor adventures. Through this engagement, Hand-in-Hand volunteers teach and model mutual respect, kindness and sharing.
“We run and give each other hugs and ask each other about our day,” Lindsey says. “Most of the children I’ve met really need a friend and they need to escape the pressures and questions at home and school. We get to talk, but mostly we play and have fun.”
Lindsey finds the service fulfilling and a fillip to self-awareness. “It’s made me more open, by being able to be a little kid myself. At the same time, I’ve learned to be more responsible, because we’re the only ones with the children during these activities. We have to be on top of things and make sure they’re safe.”
She says her Y.E.S. experience has made her more outgoing, more comfortable with people and freer to invite others to get involved, too.
One of her Y.E.S. colleagues, Brett Lee, says his volunteer work has taught him the meaning and practice of leadership as no other undertaking could. He was a director of L.E.A.P., the Leadership Education Adventure Program, which introduces underprivileged youth to backpacking, rock climbing and day hikes to build their self-esteem and sense of teamwork.
Brett, a Minnesota native, draws a distinction between leadership in the workplace and leadership of volunteer outfits. Because volunteers are unpaid and free to quit whenever they please, special skills are required to keep them committed and motivated, he points out. “If you can lead volunteers, and make them want to come back, then you’ll be able to lead anyone in a job setting later on.”
Brett also points out that volunteers feel free to offer a lot more feedback than people do in the workplace, bolstering a leader’s capacity for accurate self-assessment and self-improvement. “Volunteers are honest and will tell you how you are doing. There is no better way to learn leadership than to lead real volunteers in real situations. Y.E.S. is leadership and change all packed into one little house.”
Currently, Y.E.S. is home to 14 different community service programs that provide opportunities for HSU students to volunteer locally. All of them were initiated by students who identified a need and then proposed a means to address it—their own unpaid service. Each program operates under the leadership of one or more student directors, who are responsible for all aspects of management and program operations and service.
“The students receive valuable training to prepare and equip them to take on this impressive role,” says Y.E.S. Director Annie Bolick-Floss. “In one short year they learn more and have matured beyond what they ever could have imagined. This 40-year tradition not only benefits the local community, but also provides a steady stream of students who now continue to serve locally or in other communities as part of their chosen field, or just because that is who they have become.”
Y.E.S. started pairing college education with community service in 1968 with an experimental tutoring program offered at the Manila Community Center. In the four decades since, it has spawned breakthrough initiatives that have achieved independent status and prestige, including the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT, founded in 1978) and the Campus Recycling Program. Potawot Indian Health Village is the newest addition to Y.E.S. volunteer sites, and Y.E.S. has nurtured more than 70 programs since its inception.
Y.E.S. volunteers are one of the main platoons of the historical corps of Humboldt State undergraduates who contribute 35,000 documented hours each academic year to the local community, via classes and clubs. A 2005 analysis estimated the value of volunteer service provided by HSU students at more than $2.8 million, based on California’s minimum wage.
The 40th anniversary celebration April 26 will include a Y.E.S. Open House from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with tours between 11:00 and 1:00. Y.E.S. House (House 91) will serve as the welcoming center and will provide details about activities throughout the day.
“Family Fun,” led by YES volunteers from New Games and Environmental Ed, will be staged at the Manila Community Center.
Saturday’s celebration will wrap up with a spaghetti dinner at the Manila Community Center, capped by keynote speaker John Woolley, Humboldt County Supervisor, one of Y.E.S.’s founders and a Distinguished Alumnus of HSU.
The anniversary will be followed the next day, Sunday, April 27, by the 13th Annual Sustainable Living Arts and Music (SLAM) Festival, from noon to 7:30 p.m.
Registration is available at http://studentaffairs.humboldt.edu/yes/ or dial Y.E.S. at 826-4965.