EYL

Recently, I staffed at a youth camp called Extreme Youth Leadership, or EYL for short at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.

For six long days I spent most of my time performing precarious team building exercises, (like for instance, a six-foot-four young man wanted me to climb on his shoulders so 30+ people could fit into a two-by-two foot square,) eating college cafeteria food and relearning who I am.

To say it was a long week is drastically understating it.

The purpose of EYL, like so many other camps, is to empower and strengthen our youth through relationships and good old-fashioned fun. To be more specific, EYL is about bringing youth groups together for a shared purpose of making life better in their own communities. Many were committed to reducing the number of drunk driving accidents, helping students make better decisions, or bettering themselves, as was the case with my group.

The process of action planning, however, reminded me of something I had forgotten in the busy humdrum of my pre-EYL life, as I like to call it. There is a process to this life, that should we choose to use it, will change the world. But that’s just it; it’s all about the choice, one that we all have, one that isn’t always easy. And it takes love, above all else. Love for yourself and for the rest of humanity.

I had forgotten that, too.

I also learned something else at EYL.

My organization, the Texas School Safety Center, trains a variety of people on a variety of problems including Internet safety, bullying, dating violence, drugs, gangs, cultural diversity, just to name a few.

Just glancing over our repertoire you may or may not see the common thread linking these topics to our youth: respect and self-esteem. Respect for yourself and for others, and enough self-esteem to stand up to bullies, to the drugs, to the gangs, to online predators. If we empowered our youth with these two principles, what improvements would we see in our schools?