Southwest Georgia Community Action Council hosts Youth Enrichment Summit at Southern Regional Technical College

MOULTRIE, Ga. – The Southwest Georgia Community Action Council (CAC) empower the local youth with a series of dynamic workshops and activities.

The council hosted a Youth Enrichment Summit at Southern Regional Technical College (SRTC).

This event aims to provide enriching experiences that empower and inspire young people to achieve their full potential both academically and as active citizens.

“We feel very strongly about the camp. We’ve provided a camping experience for youth and children dating all the way back to the mid seventies. And, what’s so great about this camp is we target rising 7th and 8th graders and we try to give them a lot of activities, fun activities, but educational activities at the same time that will help them grow as citizens to learn more about the importance of being active in the community and being good citizens and giving back to the community and at the same time preparing them as they enter high school to know what options are available to them when they enter high school and then beyond, once they graduate,” said Randy Weldon, CEO, Southwest Georgia Community Action Council.

The Youth Enrichment Summit, available at no cost to rising 7th and 8th graders, includes a variety of activities such as stem education, life skills workshops, team building exercises, community service projects, college tours, and more.

“So, we run about five different camps over our 14 counties span. And, so, what we do is combine different counties that are closer together and they run a camp there. And, we have a maximum of 25 children per camp in our counties, and in Colquitt county we do a total of 50. The different activities that we do, we do college tours, we ask out camp facilitators to do a university and a technical school just to kind of give them an idea about a career path. They have a military presence coming in and talk to them about those options as well as entrepreneurs. And, then we do have a stem curriculum that we do at our camps, and we target science, technology, engineering, arts, ag, and math skills. We do money management with the kids. Here at our Colquitt county camp, they do drone demonstrations. So, the kids get drones, they build their own drones. They actually get to fly their drones in like a drone competition. They go to ABAC and they tour the campus. They learn about all the new equipment and different things that farmers are using. And, so, that’s some of the biggest things that we do,” said India Williams, Community Service Director, Southwest Georgia Community Action Council.

India Williams, Community Service Director for the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council emphasizes the importance of the youth’s involvement in programs like these and highlights their impact on future success.

“With the age group that we target, those kids need to start thinking about what they want to do for the future. And, what our camp does is provide the opportunity that they may not get to have. You know, they get to college, they get to tour colleges, they get to go on excursions. You know, we take them to museums and just different other, you know, activities that they may not get to experience. But, it also opens them up to different avenues of a career path. So, it’s not just a four year college. They may want to do a technical trade, they may want to go into the military, they may want to be an entrepreneur. We just kind of want to get their wheels turning on what they want to do when they grow up, when they get out of high school,” said Williams.

De’Andra Jacobs reporting.

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