Avalon High School Christmas Tree Delivery

18-year-old Dariana had helped decorate her classroom door the whole morning, and when she stood in front of the painting of the Grinch stealing Christmas, she had a permanent smile stretched across her face.

At her school, Avalon Continuation High School in Wilmington, the Grinch hadn’t come. Instead, seven volunteers from King’s Harbor Church came to deliver Christmas trees to students’ families in need.

Dariana stands in front of her class' entry in Avalon's Christmas door competition.

“It means a lot because a lot of people right now can’t buy a tree,” Dariana said.

At Avalon, the site of ShareFest’s year-round Youth Development Academy, 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches because of their families’ financial situation. Aware of this, the state of the economy and the holidays quickly approaching, Principal Regina Awtry knew she had students at her school whose families couldn’t afford a tree. When ShareFest approached her with the idea of donating trees, she jumped at it.

“The intrinsic value, I can’t even express,” Awtry, said. “When our kids are the recipients of people’s kindness and generosity, then it is my hope and it is my expectation for our kids that some day they will be in the position that they’ll be able to do the same for someone else. We plant the seeds in the kids that communities help each other out.”

On Dec. 11, Awtry’s voice flooded through the loudspeaker, filling the two-building campus before the scheduled  lunch-time and announcing the arrival of their guests. Avalon’s 120 students hurried out of class when they heard ShareFest volunteers had brought donuts for each of them and Christmas trees for those who needed them.

Volunteers cut and load the trees on their way to Avalon.

In the spirit of ShareFest, the volunteers delivering the trees weren’t willing to drop their gifts and leave. They wanted a chance to interact with the students.

“The trees were just an in-road to get to communicate to these kids and encourage them, hope to inspire them and ultimately bless them,” Todd Pearson from King’s Harbor said.

It was a gesture of generosity the future leaders at Avalon are already learning to imitate with a canned food drive ending Wednesday. They are already becoming leaders in a community of care and passing on what they can to those in need.

“It’s the Christmas spirit, and it’s lovely,” Ana, an 11th grade student, said.

Click here to see more photos.

Purpose through pain

18 years ago, Shannell McMillan felt she had no purpose. But in July her purpose was to show 150 youth from under-served communities just how important their lives and impacts are.

Shannell took a long path to where she is today, inspiring purpose in others. Almost two decades ago, she was despondent in her relationships and desire to prove her self-worth through her accomplishments, which never seemed to be enough. She decided to make a change.

“I was going to go downstairs, change my laundry, come back up and kill myself,” she said.

She’d laid out the pills she was going to take, chosen her outfit and thought she’d seen her younger sister asleep in her room, but when she went downstairs, Shannell walked in on a horrific scene.

“When I went downstairs, I found my sister who had just shot herself. That pretty much made up my mind.”

At that point, Shannell decided to follow her sister’s example and reached for the gun.

Inexplicably, she couldn’t even get her finger on the trigger. Not from fear or lack of desire — Shannell simply could not get in reach of the gun. She said something held her back, keeping her from getting anywhere near her sister or in reach of the gun. That’s when one of the most defining moments of her life happened.

“I told God if he wouldn’t let me kill myself, he had to give me a purpose for my life,” Shannell said.

Now, Shannell can tell you that purpose in one breath: to ignite the pursuit of purpose in everyone she meets.

And during the Youth Development Academy at Cal State University Dominguez Hills, she acted that mission out through 150 students. Each one of them came away with a defined purpose, goal and better understanding of themselves from her workshop with the Path4Teens curriculum.

Shannell helping students identify what they want more and less of in their lives

First they identified their own core values and talents. Using those, they created a mission statement to help guide their life and inspire others, whether their focus be education, respect, growth or anything they deem important in their lives. Finally, they mapped out where they want to be in ten years so they can start working toward the goal of being a star athlete, doctor, writer or college graduate.

As Shannell put it, “It focuses them like a laser.”

Whether it’s from sick coincidence or an unconventional sense of humor, Shannell found her purpose is to guide others to their mission without going through the same pain that focused her life. In July at the YDA, she saw her purpose in action.

“It’s a powerful experience for me to see (students) capture their heart and hear it come out of their mouths,” Shannell said.

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YDA 2009: It’s about the relationships

It’s unlikely anyone saw Krystian’s face through four weeks of the Youth Development Academy.

The 10th grader from Carson High School wears his shoulder-length hair like a shield around his head, completely covering his face.  It adds another buffer to what seems like a stony, withdrawn demeanor.

It wasn’t rare to see him sitting by himself, iPod headphones in, cutting off sound as well as sight.

But that immediate impression puts Krystian in a pigeonhole where he doesn’t belong.

Krystian and his counselor Daniel

It doesn’t show you his ambition, his intelligence and the bond he formed with counselors.

It doesn’t show you that the first day of camp, Krystian bounded off the bus before anyone else, and right away, he was asking about Daniel — his counselor from last year.

“I just like him. He’s kind of mellow. He’s funny and cool,” Krystian said.

Daniel was eager to see his friend again too. He talks about his vivid memory of Krystian playing soccer the first year and suddenly picking up the ball in the middle of the game and taking off with it.

“I laughed,” Daniel said. ”There’s something unique and special about him. He is soft spoken. He is very smart.”

Occasionally when Krystian didn’t want to participate in group activities and wanted just listen to his iPod instead, Daniel said he didn’t make him put his music away or put pressure on him to join in — but he had a purpose for that.

“I never got on Krystian’s case about not following every rule all the time,” Daniel said. ”He always knew that I accepted him no matter what.”

Krystian and Daniel during one of the art days

During the second half of the Academy, Daniel and Krystian were close to inseparable, and when Daniel asked Krystian to talk in front of a group of about 80 students, he didn’t balk.

When Krystian stood on stage to share a prediction of himself 10 years in the future as part of vision Path4Teens workshops helped students produce, he was no slouch. He is already working on college-level courses to get a head start on his dream of completing multiple master’s degrees.

“I always promised my mom I would be a really successful person,” he said. “She’s the reason I’m still in school.”

The pool didn't change Krystian's look.

Aisha Sterling is a teacher who knew Krystian from Stephan White Middle School, and she got a chance to see him again at the Academy.

She said so many people miss or dismiss that side of Krystian. That’s exactly why it’s so important for students to get that personal, attentive interaction the YDA is built for. Otherwise people miss the part of Krystian that is a writer, an ambitions student and isn’t afraid to give a hug.

Sterling saw first-hand how different he YDA is than a normal educational experience when she was picking up Krystian after the science portion of the Academy.

“He said, ‘you get a hug,’ and he gave me a hug — and I hugged him back,” Sterling said. “It’s one of those priceless gifts you receive as a teacher. It took me by surprise.”

In the end, much of it came down to one thing Krystian said — he was comfortable at the Academy.

“In this setting, you really get to see the students be more vulnerable,” Sterling said. “They’re allowed to be more vulnerable, but they’re not forced.”

On close to the last day of camp, Krystian pulled back the veil.

“Krystian is a normal kid who most likely has experienced some tough things in his life in the past year or so.  I’m glad that I could be a friend to him and let him know that no matter what he does, I still accept him and care about him,” Daniel said.

YDA 2009 highlight slideshow

There are hundreds of photos from the YDA on our flickr account here. Here’s just a little preview.

YDA 2009 Culmination

When Thomas would come home in the afternoons from the Youth Development Academy, he wouldn’t stop talking. He’d be bursting with a story about his day or rushing to show his family a project he’d made.

Even his great aunt — whose eyesight wasn’t good enough to see other accomplishments — could partake. GEAR UP — ShareFest’s partner who ran the science portion of the Academy — used the theme “why things glow” this year, and those science projects of glowing liquids and blinking fiber optics were perfect for Thomas to show his great aunt, even with her bad vision.

The same projects would sit next to Thomas’ bed every night so he could lean over and work on them even as he went to sleep.

“I’m so glad he was able to come,” Thomas’ aunt Vickie Boone said. “He learned so much.”

Vickie sat next to her nephew at the end of  the YDA when parents and guardians got a glimpse of the four-week program during a finale luncheon.

Thomas (middle) didn't hesitate to say the pool was one of his favorite parts.

They saw slide shows and videos of what the students did that month. They heard the cheer that went up from the 150 youth when their counselors were introduced. And they got to take home science projects students built with luminescent wires.

It was the culmination of a four-week long haul that gave students a chance to learn and grow even after summer school had been canceled for almost all of them.

“[Thomas] was especially excited the first day,” Vickie said.

On that first day, Thomas went through a theater arts session with kids from across the South Bay and Harbor areas and learned to trust them while they acted out small scenes and had to rely on the arms and strength of other team members.

Thomas (right) and his team getting in each other's personal space.

Through the rest of the four weeks, Thomas and other students would act out skits, learn about community building through creative writing, look into their future by writing personal mission and vision statements, construct science projects with GEAR UP, romp around the soccer field and basketball court, take a tour of the L.A. Galaxy’s facilities and watch the soccer team practice, and hit Cal State University Dominguez’s pool diving board more than a few times.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

“I hope they have it next year. I really hope they have it next year,” Thomas and Vickie said.

Thomas and his aunt Vickie after the celebration, taking one of his projects home

The YDA ended today, but keep checking back in the coming week to hear exactly what the kids have to say. There’s much more the be told.