This photo captures one of my favorite Team Kids’ moments.  Dr. Julie Tapp is at our Board Retreat sharing our newly created Team Kids Logic Model, along with initial results from the evaluation report of our pre/post evaluation from our Torrance expansion.  

Julie Tapp is one of the key architects of the Team Kids Challenge. She first served as our Chief Program Officer, taking the program I created, and was teaching on the frontline, and  developed our current Team Kids Challenge training, program manual and curriculum.

Julie is back on board as our lead researcher for our recent Team Kids Challenge evaluation in Torrance, and also now in Compton.    After 15 years of delivering a program that all of us at Team Kids know is critical, it’s so exciting now to have even this initial data fueling our mission. 

Julie shared the data from the pre/post surveys, showing  significant growth -in almost every area tested. The report highlights strengthening of the Search Institute’s Developmental Assets,  which research shows helps kids make better choices and can reduce high risk behavior.   Another very exciting area of significant change was made possible, thanks to the commitment of  our firefighter and police mentors. The report shows a powerful change in perception and trust with public safety -in particular police- in survey questions such as “police help kids succeed” and “police officers think I can make a difference in my community,” among others.

We are on an exciting path with data and outcomes that further prove what we’ve all witnessed and known… that it’s not just another program that kids need to be successful.  It’s relationships. It’s relationships with people with power, people who care, and people who can make our youngest generation know that they are a much needed resource in their community. 

Thanks Dr. Tapp for your tireless dedication to this great mission.  You are helping pave the roadway for the Team Kids Mission to empower exponentially more students as powerful leaders, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.  Its our next generation that can make our world a better place for all. 

Why You Should Roll-up Your Sleeves to Serve

Engaging in good deeds and acts of kindness have real health benefits. In short, when you help others, you help yourself. Here are just 3 ways that lending a helping hand in your community promotes your mental and physical health.

1. Improve Your Self Worth. Helping others improves your sense of self-efficacy. You get the opportunity to perform tasks for which you can see the fruit of your labor. You connect to a larger goal and are motivated by why you are doing.it. When you are able to see how your actions are helping others, you are immediately rewarded. This improvement in your self worth will keep you mentally and emotionally healthy. This is why Team Kids’ hands-on, youth-led service projects led West Ed to conclude that the Team Kids Challenge increased youth participants’ sense of self-efficacy.

2. Tap Into Your Happiness.

Humans are social animals. The fact that we are designed to bond and interact with others is evident in the way our brains respond to human touch and human connection. Our brains release feel good chemicals (such as dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin) when we connect with others and the same goes for when we help others. These are  the chemicals that help prevent and fight against depression and stress. This is why our Team Kids Youth Council always serves with smiles.

3. Live Longer. Helping others helps our mental health and chemically helps reduce stress, so it’s no wonder it is connected to better longevity in several studies. Volunteerism is linked to a reduction in mortality rates. Serving your community will help you build a long life filled with well-being. As our Team Kids kids create a better today for others, they create a brighter tomorrow for themselves.

Need further inspiration? Follow our Team Kids Youth Council as they serve across America and help others in 14 U.S. cities in 14 days this summer!

To see a comprehensive study on the benefits of helping others, read bioethicist Stephen Post’s work.

Children come into the world with the compassion, creativity and energy to help make a difference, but they are often discouraged from community participation. When Team Kids delivers its kickoff assembly to an entire elementary school, we ask how many children have been told they are too small or too young to do something. It gives us chills to see all the hands raise. So, unfortunately, it is no surprise that extensive empirical research from the Search Institute reports that only 1 in 4 children perceive that they are valued by the adults in their community. Only 28% of children feel that they are given useful roles in their community.

Anyone who follows the news knows the perils facing our youth. Our youth struggle with bullying, gang violence, substance addiction, sex trafficking, depression and suicide. They are at risk of feeling disconnected, unsafe, undervalued and disempowered in their schools and communities.  Youth relationships with adults are often focused on behaviors to avoid instead of developing positive, personal relationships that increase connection, safety and empowerment. In short, these realities illustrate a disconnect between youth and adults in communities across America.

We have an opportunity to turn this around. We can imbue our children with the developmental assets, relationships and experiences they need to thrive today and in the future. Empowering children to fill valuable roles within their schools and community moves the needle in a variety of powerful ways.

When Julie Hudash started Team Kids in 2001, she was guided by her faith in our children’s abilities to tackle critical community needs. She connected children with local issues – the first of which involved mobilizing a community to help save the life of a young, sick boy – and caring adult mentors, including firefighters, police officers, educators and parents. It turns out, engaging youth as a community resource helps those most in need, creates solutions to serious problems, positively contributes to youth development and strengthens adult community stakeholders as mentors to youth. Overall, the community and its members become more resilient.

What we can do: We can allow children and teens to share their hopes and dreams for themselves and the world. We can ask them what they would like to see change in their community and what they’d like to do to help. We can listen to children when they offer their opinions on their community or helping others. When they voice their concerns or desires, we can encourage them to take action. And we must always be mindful never to tell a child he or she is too young or too small to change the world. When we send this message, we disempower that particular child and rob the world of their inherent gifts. It’s time to mobilize our
young leaders today. If we wait to pass the reigns in the future, we are missing out on children’s action now.

For more inspiration: follow Team Kids Servathon: Tour Across America. Forty teen leaders will serve 14 cities across the U.S. in 14 days in honor of Team Kids’ 15th birthday and the 15-year anniversary of 9/11. Some of the projects will include landscaping a permanent housing community for the disabled and homeless, hosting a youth-led town hall meeting, rebuilding homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, bringing joy to sick children and children who lost their parents in active duty since 9/11, touring and serving at The Pentagon and presenting their service tour to the United Nations.  A documentary team will capture the tour and put together a film about kids’ voices and dreams and Team Kids will leave behind service kits in each city to continue to engage youth as community leaders.  

As 2015 Ends…
Team Kids’ 15th Birthday Begins!

To celebrate this milestone, please enjoy the following 15 reflections from students highlighting what they learned through participating in the Team Kids Challenge Program! We look forward to celebrating TK’s Birthday with you all year long!

We Can’t Just LEAVE our Children a Brighter Future

Overwhelmed by the negative messages that permeate our world, adults often ask: how do we leave a better world for our children?

We can go deeper than this.

We should ask: HOW DO WE ENGAGE OUR CHILDREN TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD?

This is the question that drives Team Kids’s mission, our staff, board members and generous supporters. Rather than taking on the formidable task of correcting what is wrong in the world, we focus on our youngest leaders who have the energy, creativity and compassion to tackle such a challenge. We tell our kids they are the perfect fit for this big job. Then we provide them the opportunity to get to work.

If you tell a child that there is another child going to bed hungry, he will gladly hand over his Spongebob Mac ‘n Cheese. If you tell a child there is a cold, scared puppy in a nearby shelter waiting for a home, she will take the puppy her favorite blanket. If you tell a whole elementary school filled with children these things, they will make a difference in their community.

Last school year, 17,961 children were empowered through the Team Kids Challenge. Team Kids coaches led police officers, firefighters, educators, parents and other community members in mentoring elementary school students through their efforts to raise $85,216.66 in funds and in-kind resources for 22 charities, such as Olive Crest, CHOC, Illumination Foundation and local shelters and food pantries.

Statistics become crippling. 1 in 5 children in the U.S. go to bed hungry each night; 28,000 children in Orange County are homeless; 1 in 5 adults in the world cannot read. Team Kids is grateful for the adults working on these critical issues. Thanks to their efforts, we can mobilize our most renewable resource – our kids – to support their efforts. Our kids provide immediate support to local charities and assistance for our community members in need. They also build strength within themselves, protect themselves from antisocial and high-risk behavior* and further brighten our collective future.

We need to protect our children from disempowering messages (“you’re too young to help”) and nourish the innate compassion that dwells within them by offering them meaningful roles in our communities. Because we do not need to just leave our children a brighter future; we need to engage them in creating it.

*Based on the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Asset research

Click below to learn more:

• 40 Assets with National Statistics – Team Kids Challenge focuses on highlighted Assets, stats in red represent the 8 Assets reported at 30% or less by youth
• Search Institute: Developmental Relationships Framework
• Search Institute web story about Team Kids in 2010
• WestEd Outcomes Summary of Team Kids