How can communities spur its youth to take leadership roles, do community service, and engage with their communities? Four of Old Saybrook’s Youth Action Council (YAC) leaders this week will train those attending a national summer leadership academy in Maine.

The four local youth YAC leaders will re-enact a typical YAC meeting as invited presenters at the Positive Youth Development Institute (PYDI) national summer training academy in Portland, Maine. YAC youth Michaela Burke, Xavier Rios, Annea Thaci, and Breydan Medbury will lead the training session “How to YAC-tivate Your Youth,” with support and commentary provided by Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services Agency Executive Director Heather McNeil and Program Manager Wendy Mill.

What intrigued the academy’s planners was the success of the agency’s concept for organizing and executing YAC’s twice-monthly Thursday dinner meetings at Duffy Pavilion at Saybrook Point. As of today, 35 percent of the Old Saybrook High School student body are Youth Action Council members and 55 to 60 students are active participants who routinely attend the twice-monthly dinner meetings and volunteer for YAC projects.

“There’s an agenda for each meeting,” said McNeil. “[The evening] begins with check-in and a sorting into [table] groups that vary each time. All [high school] grades are mixed together.

“There’s a brief orientation for anyone who is new, an ice breaker activity, and then dinner, served family-style, at the table. A table topic card is there to spur discussion,” said McNeil. “Table captains are established at the beginning of each meeting. They serve at the table and are responsible for bringing [all] into the evening’s discussion. The adults there either table-hop or sit on the edges of the group.”

The YAC was an initiative developed in response to results of the school district’s 2014 Search Institute Survey of students from 6th through 12th grades; the anonymous survey measures students’ perceptions of personal, family, school, and community assets. The more assets that youth perceive in their lives, the less likely they are to engage in risky behaviors, according to research.

Adults who work with youth found some results from the 2014 survey troubling. Students clearly needed to have more opportunities to feel valued by their community, to have meaningful leadership roles, and to participate in community service. The concept of YAC was created to offer that.

“The biggest thing out of 2014 is the YAC. It has grown and been maintained. It has momentum,” said McNeil.

One unusual aspect to YAC is that it is not limited to Old Saybrook High School students—high school-aged town youth who are home-schooled or go to magnet schools out of town can also participate.

“For some of these students, it may be their only time to meet with their peers,” said Mill.

The youth leaders and sub-group project leaders of the Youth Action Council set the agenda for each of the twice-monthly YAC meetings, with support from Mill and McNeil. YAC has three active sub-groups: YAC-LEAD (a group focused on team building, leadership training, fundraising, and taking leadership roles), YAC Impact (year-long projects with the goal of creating a project that will affect the community; the April Cardboard Community event highlighting homelessness is one example), and YAC-tivation (small projects that create an impact on the community such as caroling, soup kitchen, community garden, and Estuary food drives).

This fall will mark the beginning of YAC’s fourth year of the Youth & Family Services Agency’s Youth Action Council.

As word has gotten out about YAC’s success, more community groups are helping to support the initiative. Food for the YAC dinner meetings is provided with support from the Public Health Nursing Board, Rotary Club, and the Chamber of Commerce, among others. Food is provided by a variety of different town restaurants each month, and when dinner is over, the YAC members clean up the Pavilion together.

Burke, one of the four youth leaders presenting this week and a senior at Old Saybrook High School, has been involved with YAC for the past three years.

“As a member, it’s helped me build connections with my peers, and through my leadership roles, I’ve learned how to lead and to have communication skills,” said Burke. “Something that surprised me was how YAC grew. We’ve seen people stay with it for three or four years.”

Rios also values the YAC meetings at which members work together to plan their big events and projects.

Asked why she thought students have stuck with YAC and consistently go to the twice-monthly dinner meetings, Burke replied, “The balance—the fun times, the food, the ice breakers. And we’re put at random tables so it’s caused me to expand my circle.”