"Gifts from God" Youth Store

One unique aspect of City Impact’s Bible Club & Impact Leadership Academy is our youth store. The youth store is a way for CI students to be rewarded for positive decisions they make. This year the store was revamped slightly to reflect our passion for authentic youth leadership and youth voice!

To start this renovation project, we had to figure out what our students wanted to call the store. Therefore, we had a program wide brainstorming process, where all students from 1st-12th grade submitted their ideas for a store name. Then, our Teen Directional Team narrowed all the ideas to their top 5, and made ballots for CI Students to vote! The Votes came in and overwhelming the CI Students decided to name their store, The GFG (Gifts from God.)

After deciding on a name, we had to find the right management team! Again, we thought, “Who better to run this store, than the young people themselves?!” We didn’t have to look far to find two teen girls, who have the perfect set of skills to run The GFG! GFG Managers Radious & Patty got to work right away; familiarizing themselves with the set up, clean-up, & cashier procedures for the store. They are even in charge of doing a brief orientation with each Bible Club class that shops; explaining the rules and expectations of the store and helping the younger kids pick out items they can afford.

It has been a big time highlight watching these two ILA girls take pride in their manager positions and seeing them run our awesome GFG Youth Store. Radious has really enjoyed taking over the casher and check-out routine during Bible Club and Patty does an excellent job assisting the kids with their shopping and making sure they follow the rules! Our GFG Managers have special strengths that really complement each other and make them a great fit for this project! Our Bible Club kids have loved the benefits of shopping too and seem to look up to their store managers. I’ve witness our BC kids take the GFG rules seriously when they see how important Patty and Radious take them!

The GFG Vision Statement:

To provide, a positive and rewarding incentive program, where City Impact youth will be affirmed for attendance, personal bible study, and additional impact journals. The youth store will be managed by a group of ILA teens to promote ownership and an authentic leadership opportunity.

T.T.- Youth Leader

Here at City Impact, we encourage our ILA students to volunteer at the Bible Club program. Not only are these special teen volunteers coming to ILA on Sunday nights, but these teens also dedicate their Tuesday nights as small group leaders for grades 1 through 5. This provides our teens with extended fellowship, a great leadership opportunity, and a positive & supportive environment.

The following is an example of God’s amazing love working through a teen volunteer (written by the classroom leader):

“T.T., our junior high helper, is doing great! Tonight, she volunteered to read a book to the kids and she smiled the whole time. She also stopped to tell the kids how she knew God loved her. It was so fun to watch.” – Jami, 1st Grade Classroom Leader

ILA Mission
Teens using their God-given strengths to make a difference in the world!

Speaking Team Update

The last couple weeks the speaking team has been watching “The Great Debaters.” They learned of the preparation and research it takes to prepare an effective argument as well as the skill it takes to present that argument in a persuasive way. At the conclusion of the movie, we asked the team members to stand and give an impromptu speech about what they had done in the last week. That way it was not something they had to memorize, but it was interesting and engaging. It was a joy to watch because at different times during each young person’s talk there was a moment when they relaxed to the point of real communication. Usually, that happened when it was apparent that they had engaged their audience. It is so exciting to see the vast potential that God has gifted these young people with and I can not wait to see how He will use their gifts for His glory!
--Ty Westover, Speaking Team Assistant

Social Justice Team Update

We just began studying a new social justice issue- AIDS. One night we played a game to reveal all of the staggering statistics associated with AIDS in Africa. At the end we spent a significant amount of time discussing these heartbreaking statistics and how they made us feel. Most of the youth were saying how sad they felt or confused that such pain and suffering existed.

Each time we introduce a new social issue to the group it visibly impacts our team’s hearts. You can just see it on their faces. On the social justice team, our students get look outside themselves and their personal circumstances and they reflect on injustices happening around the world. It is really cool seeing their compassion for others intensify every week as their awareness grows.

One young woman raised her hand during our AIDS lesson and said, “Miss Miriam, I feel like I’m in school because I’m learning so much, but they don’t teach us things like this in school. You real! You make it interesting. You make me want to learn more!” I was shocked. There are times when I wonder if the issues we study really are reaching these youth. For this young woman, I know they do.
--Miriam Heider, Social Justice Coordinator

Life Application

A few weeks ago I just felt I had the opportunity to see God at work in a young woman’s life. After we finished writing journals, I asked if I could look over what they’d written and one of them stood out. In the past week a tragic event had happened in the life of one of our teen’s friends; her mother had died. I was moved by our teen’s actions in response to her friend’s pain and suffering. Recently, we had read the story of Job, emphasizing how his friends initially came just to sit and pray with him while he was in pain and sadness. They would just come and be with him through his suffering. Similarly, our teen did not attempt to tell her friend she understood the situation, but instead she just sat and prayed. She mourned and cried with her, acting exactly like she felt a friend should.
--Libby, 6-8th grade girls Small Group Leader