Summer is often a young person’s dream to enjoy a carefree life. Maybe it’s a chance to run wild in the great outdoors, playing all day and splurging on s’mores, travel to new locations, go to new places or stay with friend’s all night.

After long weeks of families being locked down at home and with most normal educational, athletic and social activities for children replaced by their zoning out in front of screens for hours, the relief provided by summer activities seems more urgent than ever.

Whatever the case, it’s a moment in the short window of being a kid, when everyone involved can make lifelong friends and lasting memories – and parents can get a little break, too.

But, this year, things have taken a turn for the worse with the coronavirus pandemic, most of the kids are stuck at home with no more traveling, no more vacations, no more going out to play or go on summer vacation. With the challenges that this pandemic has thrown in hands, a group of teens joined together to find a way to help kids and teens connected, have fun, have lots of hands on physical activities as well as learn something new and fully enjoy the summer making it a memorable one and help nurture what interests them.

A group of about 12 kids from different grades, different schools in AZ came together putting their creative side into action to help the kids & teens with fun activities and formed Youth Empowerment Forum. Their compassionate nature made them even expand their thinking address the need of empowering deprived rural kids with a basic education in rural, tribal areas.

This YEF team, came up with fun activities such as:

• Cooking & Healthy LifeStyle
• First Aid & Disaster Management
• Learn Math tricks using Vedic Maths
• Build your own website, host it, Social/Digital Media Marketing
• Genetics and Viruses
• Vedic Maths
• Learn Chess from a Chess Master
• Arts, Crafts, Sewing
• Mind Games, Rubics Cube

….many other activities/sessions

These “Online Summer Activities” have been culminated to help the kids have a blast during their summer vacations, all the while ensuring to keep themselves safe during the ongoing pandemic. However, many parents wonder if more screen time is good for kids at this point.

YEF team by creating these activities “By Teens and For Teens & Kids” with insights of what a kid or teen would enjoy, found a solution thereby making these online activities live, small-group interactive webinars, active games, individual participations, and also sharing with others, competing with every one, involving many a times family members..etc encompassing all angles.

The constant trail of e-learning for over two months can take a toll on the minds of the kids which is where these summer activities come into play. Our program main goals is, we want to keep kids active and connected. What each kid does varies based on the topic, but every program is more than passive screen time,” Shreya Kadiyala & Aashi Hemdev of YEF team says.

Our activities or programs are not like typical online courses, interactive sessions, active mind games, mind focus practices, positive self-assertion techniques, small videos of typically two to six minutes long and cover a wide range of activities such as fun cooking, dancing, creating your own website, how to do First Aid, learn new Vedic math techniques, learning mind games, chess strategies by chess masters, magic tricks, sports drills, arts and crafts projects, performing arts, social media, digital photography, and programming …etc many many involved activities and each activity is carefully designed, reviewed to cater to the likes of the kids to ensure that they enjoy doing them says Arpana Ajith, Suhas K and Gautham Choppa.

Sakshi Karra an incoming college freshman from Phoenix, AZ, who love studying science and delving deeper into the principles behind everything while being the Vice President of the Medical Explorers Club at Honor Health is helping as a guide to YEF team, says “I have always had an interest for volunteering and helping the community, hence my active participation with the YEF, looking forward to seeing the amazing high school team expand this great initiative helping all kids & teens in these crisis times with these summer activities which are novel as well as serving a noble cause! And all this at very nominal costs with no one need to shell out for a virtual camp only to find that their kid will bail after 20 minutes of video instruction!

YEF team wants to help bringing education to needy kids as part of this program by donating any funds collected to a Non-profit educational organizations that seek betterment of education to needy. After reviewing many non-profits, YEF found a Gandhi award winner, EkalVidyalaya, a non-profit organization that brings basic educationto every child across rural India. EkalVidyalayawith almost nil overheads & with volunteer help, is successfully provide education to 30 students with mere $1 a day or $365 an year. YEF team learnt that Ekal is running more than 102,000 schools empowering more than 2.8 Million rural kids with basic education.

With these noble thoughts, YEF quickly put together an action plan since past 3-4 weeks and working on launching the Fun Summer Activities programs from June 2020.

The best part of the entire endeavour was the fact that the volunteers of YEF were able to get instant support from many professionals, experts, achievers from community from many fields helping in making these activities happen eg: identified an expert teacher for Vedic Maths, they are able to convince a VP of a financial enterprise to teach Photography! A Harvard educated and financial expert to handle business, finance, investment strategies; an IITian to take Python and Programming languages; Phoenix Women’s commissioner to help in Cooking, Health, Yoga classes, Art by a renowned Artist, ….so many experts are ready to help in this endeavour of these Youth benefiting community big time.

YEF has taken inspiration and working as part of Women’s Empowerment Foundation (www.WEFUS.org) and supported by AZ’s biggest community organisation Indo American Cultural and Religious Foundation (www.IACRFAZ.org), EkalVidyalaya (www.Ekal.org) and many local businesses, enterprises and non-profit organisations.

Leadership team of these young revolutionary minds says they have more than 150 parents who have registered their kids, youth for the above activities and looking forward to really make an active contribution by connecting, networking, giving lots of Fun & learning activities which every kid would love while helping a needy rural children get educated making a lifetime difference.

These activities are not mere online classes but provides with a scope to learn, interact and network with kids around.

YEF Team
SHREYA KADIYALA Age: 14	ARPANA AJITH Age: 15	SIDHARTH UPPULURI Age: 16	ADITYA MAHESHWARI Age 13
GAUTHAM Age : 16	SAKSHI KARRA	SANJANA KARRA Age : 13	AASHI HEMDEV Age: 12