Youth Venture

Dedicated to helping young girls reach their full potentials through the game and culture of Ultimate Frisbee

My name is Amanda and I am one of the two founders of the Venture Team Ultimate. I along with Kayla decided to start this venture to help mentor and guide young girls through middle school (a really tough time for many girls). The venture started when we were playing Ultimate Frisbee one day and someone mention how fun it would be to teach Ultimate Frisbee to other people. Kayla and I have done a lot of work working with children of all sorts of ages and we both shared an interest with inner city youth. We decided to try and create a venture that worked towards teaching at risk youth the game and culture of Ultimate Frisbee. Sounds kind of silly but the more and more we learned about Ultimate Frisbee the more we realized how well it served as a catalyst to help teach youth (especially young girls) valuable life skills, such as tolerance, understanding diffrences, and learning to work and function as a team. In conjunction to Ultimate Frisbee we also wanted to help work with the girls on deeper issue such as learning more about your self, and learning strategies to help cope with day to day stress and anxiety. To do this we spent a lot of time journaling (or drawing). We started and ended each session with 10 minutes of journaling. To our suprise the girls loved journaling and treated it more as a "diary". Although we had prompts for the girls to write about, they liked writting about their day and how they were feeling, and how things were going for them. We found letting them reflect on their days was really effective for letting them "de-stress" and leave their "emotions at the door" so we were able to let lose, have fun, and play Ultimate Frisbee. After a couple weeks of journaling, they wanted us to read their journals and write back to them, and so we did. By reading their journals and writting back to them we created a stronger relationship of trust. From the journaling the girls learned how to express their feelings , and what to do if they were feeling upset or angry, or just needed a moment to themselves. We felt this was expecially important because many of these girls were going through things that Kayla and I couldn't even imagine going through. Most of the girls came from very rough backgrounds and we found that during the sessions the girls would get upset easily or sometimes get angry because of things happening at home or at school to them. We found that by letting them sit alone and journal about why they were upset was a really great way to let them express their feelings and calm themselves down untill they were ready to join the group again. Although the girls learned alot from Team Ultimate, I also learned more than I could ever have imagined. I learned more from working with these girls than any teacher could have taught me. I learned the importance of having a role model and the impact it makes on a life. I learned more about being strong, what creating change meant, and the power youth truely hold.