PEAK Initiative Holds Monthly Youth Leadership Series to Encourage Networking and Provide Resources
While Lila Weatherall and Imani Ray were catching up and sharing ideas, they realized that they were working towards the same goal: a monthly youth conference. Even though both women were working at different youth organizations, they knew it would be better to come together for this idea to work efficiently. This lead to Ray transitioning back to working for PEAK Initiative.
Ray is PEAK’s teen program coordinator and Weatherall is PEAK’s assistant director of teen programs.
Lila Weatherall (L) and Imani Ray (R). (Picture provided by Lila Weatherall and picture by Kimberly Howard-Brown)
Together they created the Youth Leadership Series (YLS), where youth have the opportunity to come out to Marquette University on a monthly basis to participate in a conference from October through April. YLS takes a break during January but then picks right back up in February.
“The alignment of our ideas brought YLS together,” said Ray.
Each conference has workshops, that are based on a monthly theme, they provide free food and have local performances. The programming was started at a Salvation Army, but then the women were donated free space at Marquette.
Although they have a limited budget, Ray and Weatherall make sure to provide professionalism and quality at each conference.
“It makes me feel good knowing they’re getting something out of this,” Weatherall said about YLS youth.
YLS is in its second year and Weatherall and Ray are working on attaining more funding and how they go about planning. Once one conference finishes, they then move onto planning the next one, but now they want to have at least three conferences planned out at a time.
Pictures by Nyesha Stone
Ray’s role involves finding facilitators and artists while Weatherall focuses on making sure people register and the conference goes smoothly.
By the third year, Ray and Weatherall want the youth to be planning the conferences.
“This is Milwaukee’s. It’s way beyond Lila and I. It’s beyond PEAK,” Ray said about the impact of YLS.
Both women have different experiences with conferences, but said they would have appreciated a consistent monthly conference in their teens. Weatherall said those experiences would have prepared her to be more comfortable as an adult in those types of settings.
“I wasn’t involved in much. I never took the chance to stand out and participate,” Weatherall said. “I want [people] to come to YLS…adult or young people.”
Although Ray did learn from and appreciate the conferences she went to, they only happened about once a year, not giving her enough time to sharpen her skills with the knowledge she learned from those conferences.
According to Ray, what they’re doing with YLS is unheard of.
Programming has ended one month early and will start back up in Fall of 2020. To donate to YLS or for more information, contact Ray at iray@peakinitiative.org or Weatherall at lweatherall@peakinitiative.org.