While parents and their children searched for napping bears and soaking alligators, the cadets of the Youth Leadership Academy got to see the Washington Park Zoo in another way. They spent their Friday morning cleaning sidewalks and pulling weeds for the good of their community.
Washington Park Zoo’s staff is largely volunteer based so they have a lot of work on their hands. Their need for a little landscaping help was a perfect opportunity for the YLA kids to step up.
“It gives them an opportunity to become leaders,” said Detective Jillian Ashley, one of the many officers guiding the cadets through their training. “We show them the importance of actually volunteering their experience, to see that it pays off in the end. Plus it makes them feel good.”
Volunteering is the service learning aspect of the YLA’s three concept program. They also learn self-determination and college readiness.
High School Junior Azayah Hunter has been a volunteer Zoo staff member for two years. His first experience with them was as a cadet himself in the Youth Leadership Academy. “We’re helping others,” he said about the Academy. “I learned different roles and how to help others.”
Hunter already had a sense of responsibility and leadership before joining the Academy. “My dad’s an animal control officer so I got my ‘helping people’ side from him. I just like helping the community.”
He also loves the animals at the Zoo. After college he would like to be a veterinarian and a musician. Both are demanding jobs but with his Leadership experience it should be no problem.
After completing their tasks, Hunter led the young volunteers back to the Discovery Center to meet some of the Zoo’s more scaly inhabitants. They took lizards and snakes out of the tanks for the cadets to touch.
Leaders see opportunity everywhere. One young girl announced that she was scared of snakes and her instructor, Detective and School Resource Officer Dion Campbell, told her, “Today you are going to conquer your fear.”
Detective Campbell stayed at her side as she struggled to touch a creature that she feared would harm her. The four and a half foot long boa constrictor was content to be held.
“She touched it twice,” said Detective Campbell, proud of his cadet.
This is what the Youth Leadership Academy is about: attitude. They show that even a trip to the Zoo can change an individual and her community.