09/01/2026
🌱 Leadership isn’t something we wait until adulthood to teach. We give young people opportunities to practice it now.
At CUP, Positive Youth Development means seeing young people not simply as recipients of programs, but as people who already have strengths, ideas, abilities, and something valuable to contribute to their community.
One of our favorite ways to make that happen is by giving our older students opportunities to lead our younger students. 💙
Sometimes leadership looks like creating “Veggie-opoly,” a game designed by students to teach their peers about growing vegetables. 🥕🥦 Sometimes it’s an older student sitting down with our preschoolers and reading them a story. 📚 And sometimes it means grabbing a shovel and showing everyone else how to turn the compost pile. 🌱
These may seem like small moments, but they’re doing something important.
Our older students get to experience themselves as capable, knowledgeable, needed, and trusted. They practice communication, responsibility, patience, problem-solving, and empathy. And our younger children get something equally valuable: older kids they can look up to who are showing them what leadership looks like.
We don't want leadership to be something our students only hear adults talk about.
We want them to experience what it feels like to have something to offer—and to use it to help someone else grow. 💙
That’s Positive Youth Development in action.
