Youth Choice
Healthy Youth, Healthy Choices
Youth Choice's mission is to educate, engage, and empower youth to make healthy choices by providing out-of-school programs that values every aspect of youth development.
Youth Choice values every aspect of a youth’s development: the health and physical needs, personal and social needs, cognitive and creative needs, and the vocational and citizenship needs. We believe in the promotion of healthy physical, intellectual, psychosocial, and emotional development in youth. Positive youth development equips young people with attributes, skills, competencies, and values that will contribute to their future role as productive, socially-minded, healthy citizens likely to succeed in areas of family, work, and society. Basing our work on the unifying framework that involves the entire community in activities that focus on the healthy development of youth, Youth Choice believes that reaching youth through a variety of means will empower them to develop and maintain healthy choices as well as promote their talents, ideas, leadership, and health. Youth Choice uses measured problem behaviors that affect a community’s youth to develop programs – “factors that impact academic performance and positive youth development, as well as problems that inhibit development” – as a guiding force for all its programs and services (Communities That Care). In addition, Youth Choice brings a community centered approach to promoting wellness in youth by involving the family, school, and community into developing and improving social norms that are conducive to healthy behaviors and lifestyles.
Youth Choice Board of Directors
Board President
Donald Gordon, Christian Fenger High School
Board of Directors
Anna Baccellieri, University of Illinois
Audrey Miles, Chicago Public Schools
Ryan Franklin, Lincolnway Soccer Club
Sona Smith, After School Matters
Our Programs
Youth Choice Internship
The Youth Choice Internship Program is an 8-week internship program designed to provide youth ages 16-18 with the knowledge and skills needed to create and assist with programs that support youth in meeting the challenges of developing their emotional, physical, social and intellectual selves and in gaining a voice and place in society. The program focuses on two areas: gaining hands on experience with logistics of putting on a community event and insight into management, administration, and volunteer services. Youth participants organize the
Links Summer Apprenticeship Program (Links)
Links Summer Apprenticeship Program is an 8-week career exploratory program designed to foster research and experience based learning and career exploration for high school students ages 13-15 in the media and trades industry. By linking youth with employers, the apprenticeship program will stimulate and assist the media and trades industries in developing and improving programs designed to provide the skills youth will need to compete in a global economy and job market. The program offers a supportive self-paced learning environment that contributes to individual success and networks/partnerships that will enhance the ability of youth to move along pathways to further education, training and employment. The program is comprised of three interrelated parts: market research, apprenticeships, and leadership development workshops.
Liberated Youth Fitness Exchange (LYFE)
LYFE is an out-of-school time program designed to give youth the knowledge and skills necessary to self-assess, evaluate, and design the physical and social dimensions of physical health. The program uses an instructional concept that emphasizes providing a combination of classroom and activity-based learning with a focuses on proper nutrition and the mastery of skills and concepts necessary for students to become accomplished decision-makers in regards to their personal and life choices. The LYFE Program has been designed to provide an integrated approach to overall health and well-being for youth utilizing four components: LYFE Boot Camp; Hunger for LYFE; LYFE Sports Experience; and Access LYFE.
LYFE Boot Camp helps youth identify and improve their individual fitness needs. At the end of this component, youth will be able to describe and apply basic principles of training, monitor personal fitness data to evaluate physical fitness, utilize fitness assessment results to set fitness goals, and design a fitness plan, monitor its progress, and make plan modifications.
Hunger for LYFE motivates and teaches youth to make nutrient-rich food choices. Aligned with the National Health Education Standards and Benchmarks, the lessons are designed to address nutrition topics of interest and personal relevance to youth. Through this component, youth will be able to identify strategies to manage weight through proper nutrition and exercise, describe how people have different needs at different ages for nutrition, and analyze and compare personal food intake to the USDA Food Pyramid recommendations.
LYFE Sports Experience gives youth the opportunity to experience non-traditional sports—the wonderful worlds of golf and tennis—through clinics and workshops. Well-trained golf and tennis professionals teach the basic fundamentals as well as advanced techniques of both golf and tennis. Youth will participate in a group/team setting to accomplish a set goal, demonstrate support for others, demonstrate good sportsmanship, and participate in activities designed to improve all elements of physical fitness.
Access LYFE reaches outside the school environment to promote physical health. Through Access LYFE, the entire community is encouraged to promote and participate in leading healthy lifestyles. Access LYFE provides outreach initiatives: Community Workout Day(s), Community Health Fair(s), monthly e-newsletters, and quarterly workshops to promote the health of the entire community.
empowerMe4LYFE
empowerMe4LYFE is an elementary school program that provides youth the opportunity to develop and maintain fun, practical, and healthier lives. Apart of the larger initiative of Alliance for a Healthier Generation to fight one of our nation’s leading health threats – childhood obesity, the empowerMe4LYFE program is a by kids, for kids movement that seeks to inspiring all kids to make healthy behavior changes and to become leaders and advocates for healthy eating and physical activity in their communities. Through this program, youth learn healthy habits that last a lifetime by participating in an 8-session healthy living course. The age-appropriate course is culturally relevant and targeted to kids ages 8-12. Each session of empowerME4Life is grounded in the expertise of the American Heart Association’s recommendations and expertise in promoting heart-healthy lifestyles. The educational content and methods are aligned with the National Health Education Standards.
If interested in donating your time or contributing to our operating needs, please contact Jennifer Blackman a (773)418-8074.