Parkway's Youth Develop Large Scale Volunteer Programs

Student youth who volunteer in the St. Louis area plan a "One Million Minor March" in May. Parkway Northeast Middle School students are in on the planning.

Thursday, youth from xxx area schools gathered at Build-A-Bear Workshop headquarters in Overland to determine the logistics of a march. Build-A-Bear is among the companies supporting the youth summit.

The Northeast Middle School students attending the BIG Return Summit aimed at bringing together students from 40 other St. Louis-metro-area schools to brainstorm and begin executing large-scale community service efforts.

"We're trying to find the tipping point for social change in St. Louis," according to an instructor, Patrice Bryan, from one of the participating schools.

Students have been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, which explores how ideas can spread like epidemics.

Tight-knit group, large-scale goal
The Million Minor March would happen at Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis. Youth join the event by verifying their participation in a volunteer activity.

Students said they want to give participants free T-shirts and motivate people to do good through volunteerism.

They intend to spread the word about the project using a website, social networking and blogs. They plan to visit other schools to share their plan.

Clean water gets focus
In another room, other students talked about ways to encourage their community to reduce its use of plastic water bottles, for health reasons and environmental reasons.

St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley and St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay are backing BIG Return.

Summit rooted in Iowa student's volunteer efforts
Talia Leman, 16, and a junior at Roosevelt High School and Central Academy in Des Moines, IA developed The BIG Return summit. She founded RandomKid, an organization to promote youth volunteerism.

Leman selected St. Louis to pilot the summit after winning Build-A-Bear's Huggable Hero award in 2007 for helping raise $10 million for people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Leman pointed to St. Louis' 2010 ranking by Convio as one of the 10 most generous U.S. cities in online giving.

The Iowa resident said students will meet again Nov. 18 and then in mid-January to assess and overcome any "wrong-way signs" they encounter along the way to developing youth volunteer programs.

Business leaders typically underwrite the cost of the programs. The goal includes that 10 percent of fundraising goes back to The BIG Return so that similar projects can be implemented nationally.

Leman wants to see yearly summits like this one held in St. Louis in other parts of the country.

"I'm very pleased with what we have and the outcome," Leman said, about Thursday's summit.

Washington, D.C.-based group supports initiative
Josh Collins, a solutions catalyst for Washington, D.C.-based Ashoka, spent five weeks in St. Louis talking with school representatives ahead of the summit. Youth Venture, a division of Ashoka, helped put on the event.

"It seemed like they were starving for leadership opportunities for their youth," Collins said. The goal of the summit is to empower young leaders and plant seeds for the future. While he acknowledged that The BIG Return will probably take a loss in its first year, the plan is to build momentum for the second and third year.

Collins served as the chair of community service for his high school's student council. He went on to start two companies, a nonprofit that gives youth money to do service projects and a software group that connects kids with volunteer opportunities of interest to them.

Those events changed the trajectory of his life, and he said Thursday's summit could serve as a spark for students, too.

St. Louis will serve as the blueprint for similar efforts in the future, he said, and the goal is to develop between 30 and 40 volunteer programs in the area in a three-month time period.

The summit allows students from private and public schools—in the city and the county—to trade ideas about service.

Here are the schools that had students participating:

• Alton Middle School
  St. Mary’s High School
  Chaminade College Prep
  St. Roch
  St. Gabriel the Archangel School
  Maplewood Richmond Heights High School
  City Garden Montessori School
  Maplewood Richmond Heights Middle School
  North Glendale Elementary School
  MICDS
  Shearwater High School
  Northview School
  Eureka High School
  De La Salle Middle School at St. Matthews
  River Roads Lutheran School
  St. Joseph’s Academy High School
  Crestview Middle School
  North Kirkwood Middle School
  Nipher Middle School
  Parkway Northeast Middle School
  Kirkwood High School
  Nerinx Hall High School
  Crossroads College Prep
  Fairview Intermediate School
  City Academy
  University City Youth Society
  St. Margaret of Scotland School
  Pattonville High School
  Marian Middle School
  Cardinal Ritter College Preparatory High School
  Gateway Science Academy
  Bayless Junior High
  Sperreng Middle School
  Hancock High School
  New City School
  Pattonville High School
  St Joan of Arc
  Girl Congress Represenatives of GSEM
  Lindbergh High School