Summer months are a dream for every kid because of the month long vacations. It provides them the 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 travelling, no more vacations, no more going out to play or have a fruitful 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 connect, 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 that nurtures what interests them.

A group of about 12 kids from different grades, different schools in Arizona came together putting their creative side into action to help the kids & teens with fun activities and formed Youth Empowerment Forum (www.wefus.org/YEF).

Their aim was not just to organise more fun activities for kids during the summer but to also ensure that they help the needy kids get better access to education with the profits from these activities.

This YEF team came up with fun activities such as:

• Cooking & Healthy Life Style
• 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 or not.

YEF team created these activities with an ideology of “By Teens and For Teens & Kids” with insights of what a kid or teen would enjoy, found a solution there by 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’s main goal is 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 & AashiHemdev 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, who is an incoming college freshman from Phoenix, AZ, who loves studying science and delving deeper into the principles behind various subjects is the Vice President of the Medical Explorers Club at Honor Health and 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 make education accessible to needy kids as part of this program by donating any funds collected to non-profit educational organizations that look after the education of the needy in rural India.

Following rounds of reviewing of many non-profits, YEF finalised a Gandhi award winner, Ekal Vidyalaya, a non-profit organization that brings basic education to every child across rural India. Ekal Vidyalaya with almost nil overheads & with volunteer help has been successfully providing 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 millions rural kids with basic education.

With these noble thoughts, YEF quickly put together an action plan since past 3-4 weeks and worked 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 including identifying an expert teacher for Vedic Maths, they were 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, and Art by a renowned Artist, and so many other experts who are ready to help in this endeavour of these youths benefiting community big time.

YEF has taken inspiration and has been 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) , Ekal Vidyalaya (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 life time difference.

These activities are not mere online classes but provide 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