Author: Anna Morris My experience as a Youthlinc humanitarian has been nothing short of transformative. Arguably, the most impactful part has been my journey through leadership. My first trip was to the beautiful island of Fiji when I was a junior in high school. Holding the title of Youthlinc first-year humanitarian carried a heavy importance to me — I had big shoes to fill. During the preparation process, I was placed on the education committee, which was thrilling. I got

By: Rivi Bero The biggest thing I have learned from my service journey is that opportunities are waiting for you- you just need to show up! Throughout my high school career, I’ve been fortunate to attend a private Catholic school strongly rooted in community service, with community service as a fundamental graduation requirement. For many, this may seem unnecessary, time-consuming, or even impossible due to the large number of hours that can look intimidating to the eye.

By: Eva Mora When I first signed on to do my first Youthlinc trip, I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing or even why. I had no real why. I signed on late in 2023 to the Cambodia 2024 team and no idea how much it would change my life. That same year I became a student body officer at my school. The fundraiser my school hosted each year brought me 40 hours of service in my own community in just a month. It was the most service I had done in a long time, and I realiz

By Shelly Burningham, Real Life Director Real Life is an after-school tutoring and life skills peer mentoring program that partners Youthlinc with a variety of organizations in Salt Lake County. Real Life provides active, practical, after-school programming to teens, tween with refugee or immigrant status in Utah. Real Life was born through the visionary leadership of Ellie Seaborn, a Youthlinc employee at the time. She explains, "Four nights a week, I was working with

By Shelly Burningham Accepting applications through March 15, 2020. Click here to learn more about the Real Life Scholarship. Over the past few years in Real Life, many students have indicated that they want to go to college and have a decent job, but in reality there are many barriers that hinder them from following through on that dream. Because of this, Real Life implemented a new college preparation curriculum aimed at preparing high school students for post-secondary

By Jackie Moynihan and Shelly Burningham, Real Life Directors For the past several years, Merrick Bank has been a tremendous donor and partner for Youthlinc and its flagship after-school peer mentoring program, Real Life . In addition to their financial support of Youthlinc programming, Merrick Bank has also taken part in Real Life curriculum development and scholarship promotion . Merrick Bank first got involved in Youthlinc during the 2017-2018 Real Life year. After gener