Last Thursday afternoon we hosted the Summit Youth Academy. The Academy is made up of 40 high school Juniors and Seniors as well as 25 sponsors and mentors. It was a great group to meet and work alongside.  

The students arrived at 2:00 in the afternoon. Because of the size of the group we couldn’t fit them into our office. Fortunately, our good friends at Immanuel Lutheran Church were kind enough to let us use their fellowship hall. Thank you! 

From 2:00-3:00 we introduced the work of SoCe Life.  
From 3:00-6:00 we sent the students out in small groups to participate in various workshops and activities throughout the neighborhood. There were 6 workshops total. Here are the workshops we offered: 

• Gardening at Legacy Garden Works
• Mural painting on a privacy fence (watch for pictures about this one!) 
• Making keychains and learning about the Raise My Head Foundation 
• Asset-Based Community Development
• Spiritual Formation--with our awesome intern AJ!
• Garden Box building and painting

And those are just SOME of the options for workshops. We had other ideas, but some people weren’t available. And of course, there are lots of other talents and abilities in our neighborhood that just don’t translate to this type of experience. 

And, as if that wasn’t enough, after the workshops, at 6:00, we gathered back together at Immanuel Lutheran Church and had dinner. It was catered by our neighbor Maytee and the meal was AMAZING!! 

A word of thanks to all the volunteers, workshop leaders and behind-the-scenes workers who made this possible. We, at SoCe Life, are fortunate to have this network of friends and neighbors who are willing to share so generously and work together. I also want to say thanks to Rev. Wendy Mohler-Seib and the whole crew from Southwestern College who put together the Summit experience. Great work!