or each YL Hero*ine we have an Action Guide with 4 proposed actions, easy to advanced for greater impact, to support, join, replicate, adapt or expand the model solution.

Youth can select their favorite challenge level and activity – each makes relevant impact – with plenty of space for individual creativity aligned with one’s lifestyle and environment.

Our core line-up of 50 young hero*ines has 200 actions. Plus, there’s 50 adult changemakers. This makes 400 activities – with favorite causes and actions for everybody.

You can organize year-round fireworks of actions. YL Coaches have an abundance for stories, actions to offer, each with resources to self-organize, tools and options for Q&A, video meetings and project partnerships with hero*ines and coaches. Wham! 

This can also be used at school, and we offer badges for completed missions.

As YL Coach, you are not expected to babysit and guide groups. It’s YOUTH leadership. They self-organize, and adults only support on-demand.

However, as YL Coach, you shall KNOW of the broad scope of proposed actions so you grow into a cornucopia of ideas and possibilities, maybe also a passionate volcano of vision, depending on your personality.

So, you’ll be well equipped as YOUNG PEOPLE’S BEST FRIEND.

May this brief look at “tools” add to your imagination on ACTION as you continue the tour. 

As an early teenager, Alisha decided to volunteer at a shelter near Lincoln High, just as her older brother had.

She was stunned to find girls and boys her age.

Homelessness was something she thought of as an adult issue. 

These children and youth had innocent visions of becoming doctors, artists, teachers, and presidents … but Alisha realized that given their situation and cognitive development … they did not have the resources necessary to pursue their dreams.

After spending years volunteering and speaking with families experiencing homelessness, she realized the serious lack of affordable and convenient educational programs available for youth experiencing homelessness.

She saw services offering adults job training and help with housing. What she didn’t see was programming that had children’s needs in mind. 

When Alisha spoke to a transitional housing organization in Portland, she learned that they had lost funding for children’s activities and could not manage volunteers.

This is not an isolated case. 

Despite their right to extracurricular activities, youth experiencing homelessness across the country often lack access to them.

Given the social, cognitive, and academic benefits of extracurricular activities, programs and volunteers are needed in shelters to empower youth experiencing homelessness to reach their full potential.

Teens and children at the shelter had the same concerns and hopes she did, but their experiences were so different, because of the resources she had access to.

So, Alisha set out to find a way to get skilled people in the community to volunteer their time so that children living in a shelter could have access to the extracurricular activities they otherwise miss out on.

The idea began as a school club, but, eventually, she realized the concept was bigger than a club. The effort needed volunteers and infrastructure. She searched for an established organization that the club could partner with, but no one seemed to have the capacity.

So, she would create that organization herself. 

“I thought that getting 501(c)(3) status itself was going to be the most daunting part, but that ended up being one of the most easy things. It was daunting to realize we would have to create bylaws, apply for grants, create a board.

Her classmates helped, and Kids First Project became a robust nonprofit that gives homeless children access to tutoring, mentoring, the arts, skills classes and games.

Aware that there is more need than in her own district, Alisha’s crew developed a replicable model that inspired youth can copy and apply to set up Kids First chapters in their town, too.

In 2016, when Alisha was a junior at Lincoln High, The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards named her one of the nation’s 10 top teen volunteers. She has since been honored with several awards, including L’Oreal Women Of Worth.

Emma has served 1000’s of volunteering hours and she loves to read.

When she learned that First Nation kids in remote fly-in communities (without roads!! connecting them to … elsewhere) of Northern Ontario were two to three years behind in reading and writing, had no access to any books at all (an average of 1 per household), but experienced high suicide rates (30 of 120 students at one school) … she remembered the famous quote ‘My ticket out of a life in poverty was reading’.

She started Books With No Bounds to collect and buy 2,000 new and ‘like new’ books. First, using her own pocket money and selling candy kabobs, then local pizza restaurants and malls offered to serve as drop off and storage points.

When the first shipment of 40 banana box sized boxes piling up high, completed with a shining smile made the local papers’ frontpage, and next week to morning TV, Books With no Bounds took off.

Teachers invited Emma to speak at schools, and as she invited her peers to each donate 1 good book from some years back that they no longer read, but that can brighten another child’s life, students contributed with great enthusiasm. One morning would easily generate 1,000 books, worth $10,000, fit to equip an entire children’s library. Bam!

Emma met officials, arranged airline transportation, fundraised and packed around the clock, always with notes of love.

First, teachers had responded in shock, saying we never ordered this, we cannot pay for this, and when 14 year old Emma said it’s a gift, they broke into tears.

Thank you letters from students were streaming in, with photos of tiny school rooms swamped with books, children proudly holding up their favorites, and Emma answered every single one of them! The children don’t know I get hundreds of letters every week. I don’t want them to be disappointed.

She received gifts in return from native grandmothers, traditional mocassins and gloves became standard for every presentation.

The grand chief heard of what’s going on, and when he realized the young activist was no twen but 14 years old, he broke into a grand smile and his heart melted like so many others’.

Soon, Emma got invited to visit communities, discovered what it means to live in fly-in communties in Canada’s North, with majestic forests, frozen streams, wolves, hunting, traditional customs and rites … living magical moments and making many new friends.

She also witnessed enormous poverty and bad governance, which strengthened her determination for her mission, and to add educational resources.

2 years later, she had sent 60,000 books to all 49 communities, and yet, she had only started.

Emma would speak at WE Days, star in WE films, her story made it on the back of cereal boxes! and journalists frequented her house that much that she had to put limits on it, so she could focus on her mission, because meticulous notes on each book received and forwarded, neat packing and up to 5 social media posts per day  take TIME.

Her path would take her to Sweden to twice MC the World’s Children’s Prize, meet more child activists, prime ministers, queens, to speak at the UN, inspire adults at women conferences – and next day be back in classes speaking to kids, besides contributing to local charitable activities like clean-ups and jumping into winter lakes for donation drives.

If ever you needed a living example of what it means to embody the sacred virtues of a noble Knight creating JUSTICE for all in our time, look at her and let her be a MIRROR that makes you feel your own HEART and live it.

Because you need to realize: One young hero*ine is not enough, and likes and shares mean nothing for the cause. What means something to WARRIORS is when others follow the example and do like her, since this way not only children are helped but also HER DREAM will be achieved, and she can breathe and with peace in her heart pursue other trails that her soul foresees. This is how you truly pay respect to these young people. And make their day. and step into your own gretaness greatness. How will that feel?

“Every child has the right to an enormous supply of books.”

And everyone can help: by donating books, postage, and doing book drives for aboriginal youth in their country!

And by adapting the Action Guide for other groups and settings. You know what to do. Let us know of your results. we are here to help. #bemoreawesome