By Patti Counce
Scottsdale Leadership Class XVII
I am the mom of a young teen and I often wonder, worry and contemplate my son’s future; probably like most moms. I have moments when I think wow, he’s so awesome and is going to shake up the world! To OMG, what is going to happen to him? I am not talking about basic values, beliefs and purpose…those have been drilled into him since birth. I know he will always be a good person and he generally makes good choices when given the options. But what I wonder is how committed he will be to our community, helping others and making this world a better place?
Sure he’s in a great middle school, he’s in boy scout troop 616, involved in a stellar football organization, the Argonauts, and he’s in a Christian Youth group at St. Anthony. All of the above have amazing coaches and mentors that are teaching him about himself and about life. But what else can I do? See the following article, http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/1003120.shtml, about a program that hits the mark for me… although it’s not exactly convenient to Scottsdale.
Let me know what you think or if we have something similar close to home that I need to check out.
I’ll take all the help I can get!
The Scottsdale Leader 
We have a CIT program here at the Scottsdale/PV adn Desert Foothills YMCA. it is a 3 week program that includes 1 week of training, 2 weeks of work experience. The training consists of CPR/First Aid, Child Abuse Prevention, Bloodborne Pathogens, Application processes for Scholarships/Grants/Employment, and much more. The work experience would be working with ages 3-12 in summer camps. A mentor will go over job responsiblities and meet at the end of each week to review evaluations. Interviews will be conducted at the end of the 3 weeks to determine future volunteer opportunities and possibly employment.