Great West Relay For Life Youth Summit

This year, I have been privileged to be a part of the Great West Relay For Life Youth Task Force (YTF). The YTF is a group of seventeen high school and college students who work with three American Cancer Society (ACS) staff members. Members come from all over the twelve most Western states in the US, excluding California. We had two official meetings in Seattle, attended the National Collegiate Leadership Summit in Dallas and the Great West Leadership Summit in Reno, and were in touch constantly via conference call and email. We worked on a variety of projects and programs throughout the year, which were distributed and rolled at at our Summit this past weekend. My primary project was designing a Youth Pacesetter with two other members. The program sets a timeline for the events/deadlines essential to planning Relay, challenging all Youth Relays to stay on track and to meet and exceed expectations. The year has been stressful at times, but ultimately incredible. I have learned so much from my fellow YTF members because we all come from such different backgrounds and have had diverse experiences. It has been amazing to work with sixteen of the best leaders in the Great West Division!

Summit Video Filming in Dallas

Our work culminated at Youth Summit this past weekend. I arrived in Seattle on Wednesday, after finishing my final paper, making over 300 copies at our local ACS office, haphazardly packing, and driving to DIA. Caitlin and I arrived close to midnight and completely crashed. I had been back in Colorado for less than three days before leaving, so I was tired! On Thursday, we helped Kelly, our YTF chair, and Nicole, our staff lead, organize, prepare, and finalize the last minute details. The rest of the group arrived throughout the afternoon and evening and we went straight to work. I have become a pro at preparing presentations in short periods of time - I can whip out a PowerPoint presentation in under twenty minutes and outline a verbal presentation in even less than that.

Summit participants attended one workshop for their position on their Relay committee (ex. Event Chair, Team Development Chair) and four breakouts on more detailed topics (ex. Team Recruitment, Fundraising Development, Survivorship Development). In between the breakouts/workshop and meals, all 300+ high school, college, and ACS staff participants got together for General Sessions. Everyone arrived for dinner on Friday while the YTF frantically decorated the general session ballroom, presentation rooms, prepared presentations, tracked down lost packages, etc. On Saturday, Summit officially started with our opening general session. Our keynote speakers were Dr. Gordy Klatt, founder of Relay, and Pat Flynn, "mother of Relay." We were fortunate enough to have Pat speak at the Colorado College Relay this past spring, and it was very exciting to see the two creators of Relay at our Summit.

Our theme for Summit was "spy," as exemplified by our introductory video. We decorated in line with the theme and all of our general sessions featured skits with "famous spies." Participants were fingerprinted and greeted by secret agents at registration too! On Sunday, we had a real FBI agent speak during one of the general sessions. The theme was very fun to work with and we all enjoyed running around in black and sunglasses!

I taught a workshop with my buddy Jason for Event Chairs and Co-Chairs that went incredibly well! We were a little nervous because neither of us had time to practice, but the two hours flew by and at the expense of bragging, people were talking about it all weekend! I taught Team Recruitment with another YTFer, Walter, twice, following the workshops on Saturday. That one was a little rougher because Walter and I do not complement each other quite as well, but it still turned out great. We held a "casino night" with dessert, a DJ, and professional casino games for the Saturday night participant activity. The YTF, of course, stayed up until the early hours of the morning each night working on the next day.

On Sunday, our closing speaker was Jeff Ross, the most inspirational speaker from the ACS headquarters, and in our opinion, the world! It was a fantastic end to a wonderful summit! Our wrap up party was very difficult because we have all become such great friends over the year! We are definitely planning a YTF 2007 reunion in the future because some of us are graduating or will not be able to be on the YTF next year for one reason or another.

Caitlin and I flew into DIA and returned to CC at 2:30 am on Monday. Block 3 began at 9:00 am. I am in Environmental Management and love it thus far! In fact, I actually need to go to class right now, so more later!

The Group Modeling our "No Cancer" SWAT -style vests