Hello! My name is Lyndsey and I am a senior at Cosby High School. I joined Y Street during my sophomore year and it has made a huge contribution to my development, especially when I became a Y Street Leadership Team Member from my junior year on.

I initially joined this highly impactful, youth-led organization because of a dear friend and found my own passions quickly sparked by the campaigns that Y Street works on. I felt the organization rapidly responded to the general issues of obesity and tobacco in Virginia.

On January 25, 2018, which was Healthy Youth Day, a few ambitious Y-Sters and Y Street Leadership Team members teamed up to share our voices with key decision-makers at the General Assembly of Virginia. Some of these decision-makers included State Senators, Delegates, and Legislative Aids.

The day started with a networking breakfast where Y-Sters got the chance to speak with Delegates, Senators, and VFHY staff. We led detailed discussions which helped enhance our networking abilities and develop our leadership skills.

After the breakfast, we walked to the General Assembly for our scheduled meetings. While simply catching a glimpse of my surroundings in the buildings, I felt such a calm intensity as I reflected on the history of legislative mastery. I felt very confident in our goals and our need for change. These, I thought, are the people who can immediately take action after listening to what we know, what we have collected from Virginians who are spread far and wide. Y-Sters, who have been aided and guided by our advisors, can help bring legislative action into fruition, simply by conversing with those who will listen.

Following our networking breakfast, I held three meetings with Legislative Aides. My first meeting allowed me to present myself as an advocate for our growing Fresh Spot campaign, which you can support at FreshSpotVA.com! I explained that we are striving for a political understanding of community-based need revolving around guaranteed fresh produce, further economic opportunity through job growth, and the later impact of establishing healthier neighborhoods.

The last two meetings I participated in were with two fellow Y-Sters, Kit Harmon and then Gabriel Fisher, both outstanding YSLT members as ready for change as I am. These two meetings were focused on our 24/7 campaign, which gave me great comfort because of the opportunities offered to myself and many others during the past two years. What amazes me is that since I became a member, we have added over 11 divisions to our 100% Comprehensive Map, and it’s been such an honor to contribute to that through school board meetings in Petersburg, Dinwiddie, and Hopewell.

During all of my presentations I also provided information about out Great Starts With Breakfast campaign, which includes Y-Sters having the opportunity to coordinate principal meetings in order to aid the implementation of alternative breakfast models within individual schools, depending on administrative flexibility and student requests.

After providing key decision-makers with precise statistics of the progress we’ve made through our advocacy efforts, such as the addition of comprehensive divisions or messages on our campaign websites, we encouraged policy changes that were based in the best interest of the people impacted by our 24/7, FreshSpot, and Great Starts With Breakfast initiatives!

Witnessing the depth, obstacles, and procedures that are common in legislative processes truly expanded my perspective of policymaking and left me with a great impression of our key decision-makers, who are advocating for some of the same causes we are. The sole difference is that they have the second piece of the campaigning puzzle: the ability to enforce!  Throughout Healthy Youth Day, our impending campaign goals felt closer with each passing minute, and I realized that there is still so much we can do as a part of the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. It was, indeed, a Happy Healthy Youth Day, but I say let it be Healthy Youth Month and Healthy Youth Year!

I’m Belle and I’m a senior at Central High School in Woodstock, VA. This is my second year in Y Street and my first year on the Y Street Leadership Team. My favorite campaign is the 24/7 campaign because of how much it can change schools all around Virginia.

The main issue that the 24/7 campaign tries to solve is getting schools to be 100% tobacco-free and making the rules more specific to the people who are on campus regularly and those who visit. There are many dangers that come with tobacco rules not being enforced, like parents smoking on campus because they don’t see a sign or don’t believe that the rules are enforced. Kids could be getting pressured into starting to use tobacco products because everyone else does it and it’s just a cool thing. When your school becomes 100% tobacco-free, Y Street will send you free window stickers, metal signs, and a big poster to be hung up somewhere in your school. We want to try to get more schools in Virginia on our 100% comprehensive map this year and get more people engaged in our campaign.

This campaign can help out our communities by showing young kids and teenagers that smoking really isn’t all that cool and is just really a dangerous thing you’re doing to your body. This could help impact young kids by not introducing them to the tobacco lifestyle. Being a tobacco-free school can help the students see that they don’t need that in their lives and it won’t help them concentrate better in school or with classwork. My school is not yet tobacco-free, but I’ve had 2 principal meetings and a school board meeting. My goal is for my school to be on the 100% comprehensive map before I graduate. I believe the 24/7 campaign is an important campaign because it can help the future generation and hopefully reduce the amount of tobacco products being made and sold to people around not only Virginia, but in every other place.

On February 14, Y Street will host our annual Tobacco-Free Spirit Day to celebrate all the schools and divisions with comprehensive tobacco-free policies. For more information on Tobacco-Free Spirit Day and to sign up your comprehensive school or division to participate, please go to 247campaignva.com/spiritday.

My name is Miazha and I am a junior at Riverbend High School. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to be a part of the Y Street Leadership Team for my first time this year. It’s very exciting to take on more tasks for Y Street and be exposed to important people who help make real changes!!!

One campaign I’ve grown to be very passionate about is Great Starts With Breakfast. This campaign is important because eating breakfast in the morning is so important, and it helps students learn better when they’ve eaten a healthy breakfast. Students who do not eat breakfast in the morning tend to act out in class, causing problems in the classroom because they’re so hungry. We can help put an end to students coming to school hungry by making breakfast more accessible for all students. Studies have shown that eating breakfast helps students’ productivity increase, helping us focus and perform better on tests.

One of the ways we’re encouraging more schools to adopt alternative models and get more students to eat breakfast this fall is through participating in the Virginia Breakfast Challenge! The Virginia Breakfast Challenge is a statewide initiative focused on rewarding students and schools for eating more breakfast. At my school, we are hosting a Breakfast Club Card Challenge, where students receive prizes for eating breakfast. The more breakfasts they eat, the higher the rewards! It’s important for us, as students, to stand together to put an end to kids being hungry and to help students of all ages succeed in the classroom through offering breakfast at times that are more convenient for our schedules. I hope after reading this that everyone in our community will show awareness of this issue and implement a change!

For more information on the Challenge and to sign your school up, visit http://vabreakfast.org/.

My name is Dakota Kahley and I am a senior at Stafford High School. I have been in Y Street for 4 years and this will be my 3rd year on the Y Street Leadership Team.

Every summer, as leadership team members, we are invited to attend the YSLT Kick Off Summit. At the Summit, we attend workshops that educate us on tobacco and obesity issues, the campaigns for the upcoming year, and how to be professional. These workshops give us the tools to help us be stronger leaders in our schools and communities. My favorite session this year was one called “UZOO,” where we had to number values or personality traits on a scale to find out what our leadership style was. Each style (which related to an animal) highlighted our strengths, motivators for success, and how best we work with others. This session showed us that there are different kinds of leaders based on one’s personality and how we can use each other’s strengths to work together successfully.

In addition to the workshops, we also participate in activities that engage us in our community. This year, we went to G.H. Reid Elementary School and volunteered with Renew Richmond to build a greenhouse so that the students who attend school there can plant and grow fresh fruits and vegetables. It felt so good to go out into the Richmond community and work on a project that would directly help these students, who may live in a food desert, have access to fresh and healthy foods. Every year we also host a networking lunch, where we invite local professionals in to meet us and learn more about Y Street. I really like the networking lunch because even though we are teaching others about Y Street and the work we do, it is also a learning experience for us to hear from professionals who’ve made careers out of working on the same issues that we work on in Y Street.

In the evenings, we took a break from workshops and got the chance to connect through fun activities like Jumpology and mystery escape rooms. They were awesome! Both activities were focused on having fun while helping us build a team in the process. At Jumpology, a few of the members did a ninja-styled ropes course. Rooting for your new friends to succeed against the obstacles was a great activity that helped bring us closer to one another.

Throughout the whole summit though, my favorite activity by far was connecting and sharing ideas with fellow youth activists from across the Commonwealth! Throughout my years on the YSLT, I have made so many friends at these Summits. I’ve even met someone whom I consider to be my best friend here. The opportunity to work at this level and have this experience with her, as well as other amazing youth activists, was and is something that I will never forget!

The Y-Street members at Tallwood High School held a Great Starts With Breakfast event during breakfast and lunch. When planning this event we had to consider how many people were going to participate in the event in order to get the right amount of student surveys and proper incentives. Our incentive was a $50 gift card. Once a participant completed an survey they were able to participate in the raffle. The most important part of planning the event was grasping the students interests with a captivating conversation about changing their breakfast in the morning.

We promoted our event by first asking, “Would you like to have a voice regarding your school breakfast in the mornings?” We promoted our event by making announcements over the school’s morning announcements and networking throughout the school. The highlights of our event were when the students showed how enthusiastic they were about the Great Starts With Breakfast campaign and interest in joining Y Street. Students were really appreciative that there is a club trying to improve the school as we are.

The participants were really engaged in this event because they were given a chance to change school breakfast at Tallwood. Most students agreed that the current school breakfast is unappealing and unpleasant. Majority of the participants also added that they usually don’t eat breakfast in the morning due to the inconvenient time and where breakfast is served. A popular idea from our peers was the Grab and Go option because it allowed them to avoid lengthy lines, get a healthy breakfast, and get to class on time. During this event we learned how to talk to our peers and grab their attention. This skill allows us to recruit new members and promote our campaigns through our Y Street events.

My name is Morgan and I am junior Colgan High School. I have been involved with Y street for two years and I joined the Y Street Leadership Team last spring. My involvement in Y Street has been one of the most fascinating and motivating experiences of my high school career. As I re-live the moments I have shared with my fellow YSLT members at Y Street events held throughout Virginia, many friendly memories flood into my brain. Through this program, I have not only created life-long friendships, but I have also gained invaluable leadership skills through meetings with key-decision makers. Recently, I was invited to speak at the 2017 Weight of the State Conference.

The conference featured Virginia’s most experienced professionals involved in combatting childhood hunger and obesity. With such amazing organizations in attendance, like No Kid Hungry and the American Heart Association, I was confused as to why myself, a 16-year-old, was invited to such a professional conference when I did not have nearly as much experience and insight as the adult presenters. After listening to the presentation given by Rescue Executive Director,  Jeffery Jordan, and Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth Director of Marketing, Danny Saggese, I realized that myself, along with my Y Street members, serve an important role in the process of ending childhood hunger, obesity, and smoking. Since we are teenagers, we can provide invaluable feedback to the adults that strive to help youth become healthier as they transition into adults. Danny and Jeff’s presentation was eye-opening and laid down a wonderful foundation for the rest of the day.

Though I enjoyed all the presentations given, my favorite session was most likely second session I attended, School Wellness: Moving From Talk to Action. This session was the most enlightening because Kristina Shelton (Action for Healthy Kids) lead fascinating group discussions and activities that encouraged personal insight as well as collaboration. As soon as I walked through the door I was amazed by her energetic presentation style. Every person in the small room was told to stand up and participate in some sort of physical activity (keep in mind the room contained only adults other than myself) so this was a bold way to begin a session. Kristina also brought lively conversation into her information section of the presentation and the most unusual instructions Kristina gave were to go around the room and write solutions to scenarios listed on the papers on the wall, I found this odd because most of these teachers do not usually participate in such activities like this since they are normally the ones who arrange the activity for the students. Though I enjoyed Kristina’s surprising presentation methods, the session was my favorite because I could provide different solutions to the scenarios then the methods suggested by the school teachers and administration. Being the youngest conference attendee was somewhat frightening, yet the information I obtained was invaluable to my education as a student and I am glad I was given this wonderful opportunity by Y Street.

My name is Zoe L., and I am a senior at Brentsville District High School. I have been a member of Y Street for two years and a member of the Y Street Leadership Team for the last year. I decided to join Y Street as a way to understand more about youth problematic topics in Virginia, such as childhood obesity and tobacco. Through Y Street, I have enhanced my leadership skills, and I have become a strong youth activist.

Recently, I attended Healthy Youth Day with a few members of my Y Street Leadership Team. At this event, we spoke about Y Street and our campaigns to key decision makers, such as delegates, senators, and legislative assistants at the General Assembly building in Richmond, VA. This was an opportunity for these decision makers and influential members of Virginia to understand why Y Street is such an important part of our lives and the impact each and every campaign has had on our lives and our peers. As I walked through the halls of the historic General Assembly building, passing offices of Virginia’s key decision makers, it made me realize that I am part of a change to come! I believe the work and influence that I have made in my community has allowed me to assess the problem areas. As a result, I am able to present this information to my peers, school board members, and legislators! At Healthy Youth Day, I attended five meetings with two other Y-Sters, in which we addressed different legislators with the same ideas and statistical evidence from our campaigns. While talking with these legislators, we relayed to them the problems we, as youth, see on a daily basis, while simultaneously presenting the solutions available through Y Street’s campaigns. I mainly discussed our 24/7 campaign, as I have made that my main focus this year to make my school division 100% tobacco free!

This event allowed me to reconnect with my fellow Y-Sters and collaborate with them about how they are influencing their schools with our most recent campaign, Great Starts with Breakfast. Not only was I able to reconnect with them, but we were able to share ideas and strategies as well. Additionally, I was able to experience my first ever visit to the Virginia General Assembly! It was really interesting to walk around a building that has had such an impact on Virginia’s history; just think about how many bills have passed through that building! It was an amazing experience and it reminded me that we as Y-Sters are the activists and leaders of tomorrow!

Hi! My name is Jordan Wilson, I’m a Senior at Cosby High School in Midlothian, VA. I’ve been an activist in YST for 3 years, and have served as a member of our State Leadership team for 2 years.

On December 15th, I had the opportunity to be apart of a Great Starts with breakfast event at Hopkins Road Elementary School. Myself, along with 10 other Y-Sters from across the state, helped set up for grab n’ go breakfasts as well as participate in Breakfast with a Buddy! Getting to work on the Great Starts with Breakfast campaign is always an enjoyable time but, it was sharing that meal with the kids at the school and carrying on conversations, making sure every student had a breakfast and a buddy to share it with – that was the best part! I distinctly remember thanking the lunchroom via mic. for allowing us to be there that day and how enthusiastic all the kids were in thanking us for being there as well.

The event was one of my favorites by far, and carried meaning that far outpaced the event itself. Getting to interact with kids and learning about how breakfast was important to them taught me that this campaign wasn’t only made to help kids of all ages, but breakfast is desired by all age brackets. This event has impacted the lives of several students at that elementary school and the positive impact continues in schools with similar alternative breakfast programs statewide; allowing students to explore the importance of breakfast and its impact on their school day!

Written by: Jordan Wilson, Youth Leadership Team Member

On February 15th, 2017, schools in divisions with 100% comprehensive tobacco policies will celebrate Tobacco-Free Spirit Day. Schools and divisions across Virginia will showcase their commitment to being tobacco-free by hosting fun and informational school-based events for students, staff, and visitors. Schools that participate will receive an “Event-In-A-Box” kit, complete with 24/7 gear and ready-to-use activities. Additionally, schools that participate will have the chance to win $247!

Visit 247campaignva.com/spiritday to learn more, find out if your school is in a comprehensive division, and apply to host a Tobacco-Free Spirit Day event.

My name is Savannah Shaver and I am a youth activist with Y Street and a 2016-2017 member of the Y Street Leadership Team. As a member of Y Street, I have promoted a healthier Virginia by educating my peers and community members about the dangers of sugary drinks through the Rev Your Bev campaign and by meeting with my school board members to advocate for a comprehensive tobacco policy with the 24/7 campaign.

This July, I attended the Y Street Leadership Team (YSLT) Summit, a week-long conference held in Richmond, VA. I, along with my fellow YSLT members, gained skills in public speaking, networking, and policy process. We had the opportunity to use our new skills by presenting our testimonies to one another and hosting a networking event. During this week, we also became experts on this year’s Y Street campaigns: Rev Your Bev, 24/7, Great Starts with Breakfast, and Fresh Spot. We also had the opportunity to volunteer at Tricycle Gardens, an urban garden, to learn more about the production and importance of healthy, accessible produce – the focus of our Fresh Spot Campaign. The summit also taught me a lot about event planning and team organization so I can take my new skills and knowledge back to my corner of Virginia and help lead it into becoming a healthier and more fruitful environment.

On behalf of my fellow YSLT members, I want to thank Y Street, The Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth, all of the attendees of our networking event, the American Heart Association, Tricycle Gardens, and everyone who gave their time and support to make this summit possible.

I could not be more honored and excited to be a part of the Y Street Leadership Team. Y Street is so important to me because it not only provides me with a chance to give back to my community, but because I can see it making a big change in my world. The summit was an unforgettable experience that connected me with Y-Sters who are just as passionate as I am. It gave me a new understanding of leadership that I will carry with me forever, specifically in the coming year of Y Street events. As a YSLT member, I hope to empower people in my school and community to not only make healthier choices, but to become more involved in the movement to promote a healthier Virginia!

2016-16 YSLT Members: