Story From Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Boys & Girls Clubs of America equips youth with essential skills for now and laterr BY STACEY FREED
Nzingha R., above, was a Boys & Girls Clubs of America 2019 Youth of the Year finalist.
NZINGHA R. WANTS TO SOMEDAY BE A LAWYER and, ultimately, a Supreme Court justice. She is also interested in cooking and scriptwriting and acting. No one would guess how shy Nzingha is — or rather, used to be — when speaking with this intelligent and confident 17-year-old rising high school senior. But for the past eight years as a member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s (BGCA) Gloucester County location in Glassboro, N.J., Nzingha has been honing her skills in public speaking and collaboration. “I love cooking,” she says, “and I was able to have my own (weekly) cooking and nutrition show. The scripts I wrote were about big things we were tackling like family issues. It was a good place for me to start using my voice for positive change, and that’s something you need for any kind of law.” The ability to work collaboratively, be a leader and take initiative are just a few of the attributes Nzingha developed through the organization’s programs aimed at equipping young people with essential skills to succeed at school, in adult life and at work. It can be difficult to point to one particular skill learned as a child and say that’s what translated into success at school or in a career. And while preparing a first grader for a career might seem premature, research shows that with practice, social and emotional skills have big payoffs throughout a person’s life. “If young people can practice these skills over time, they are better able to transfer them to real-life settings,” says Crystal Brown, BGCA national vice president of youth development. >
63