Youthlinc Welcomes Judge Memorial Seniors for Service Day Collaboration

Youthlinc had the pleasure of hosting fifteen eager seniors from Judge Memorial Catholic High School for their annual school wide Christ the King Service Day. This awesome group of volunteers dedicated their time to learning about Youthlinc and supporting our programs. They spent the morning contributing to meaningful hands-on projects that support our Service Year and Real Life programs.

The day began with a short orientation: our Youthlinc staff introduced the seniors to the vision behind our Service Year and Real Life initiatives.

The Youthlinc Service Year is a 9-month transformative program focused on youth service learning and leadership development. This immersive program empowers young individuals to become lifelong humanitarians by making meaningful impacts on both local and international communities.

Real Life provides meaningful opportunities for refugee and immigrant youth to practice and develop skills to make them more successful after high school including job readiness, college readiness, language and communication development, financial literacy, and interpersonal skills. Real Life students and volunteers also have fun celebrating each other’s cultures, going on field trips, and creating friendships.

Once grounded in the “why”, the group got to work on four key projects:

• Cycle beads: The seniors helped assemble and package cycle beads—visual aids used in Youthlinc’s menstrual‐health and hygiene education initiatives. Their careful work will support girls in partner nations as they track and understand their cycles with dignity and confidence.

• Mondo art: This is one of our international projects that connects our service year and real-life programs through art exchange. Each year we host a class with students around the world and at our Real-Life sites to think of something that is important to them, or define who they are, and draw it. These art pieces are collected and added to a book with art from around the world that is shared with each Service Year site. These pieces of art bridge the language barrier and create long-distance connections. Students helped us put all the art in protective sheets and create a 12 international books that will be shared across the world this upcoming summer.

• Real Life Thank You Cards: Students helped us cut and create thank you and holiday cards that will be used throughout our Real-Life program.

• Halloween Candy Bags: Students helped us put together a special Halloween treat for our Real-Life students.

Because of their work, our next volunteer teams will travel abroad better prepared; our partner countries will receive meaningful materials; and our local Youthlinc community will be reminded of the global impact that starts right here in Salt Lake City.

Thank You

Thank you to the fifteen seniors from Judge Memorial for showing up with heart, humility, and hard work. And thank you to all our Youthlinc supporters—when local youth engage in service like this, it strengthens our communities and amplifies our mission.

We look forward to future collaborations, and to continuing to empower young people to make an impact both locally and globally.