Last week I was privileged to be a session presenter and volunteer for the Youth Venture of North Central Massachusetts’ Fall Kick-Off. What a blast!

I presented two sessions of “Who’s Following You? Using Social Media to Measure Success in Your Venture” with some “technical support” from my colleague and good friend Linda of Change Dynamics, Inc. She is an amazing facilitator and presenter in her own right and it made my day even better to have her scribing for me during the fast-paced sessions. She captured all the kids’ ideas onto flip charts as we went and it really helped them with some of the exercises we did to see all the feedback in front of them.

The kids were a great audience; interactive, enthusiastic, and willing to share. I learned new things and I hope they did too. It was amazing to go around the room and hear the ideas and projects these kids were about to take on in the next year to be changemakers in their communities.

My take away from the day is this: Find people doing good work out in your community and connect with them. Offer what you can give, be it time, expertise, or financial support.

Those 350 middle and high schoolers at the Kick-Off have experienced first hand the power of collaboration and have personally realized their own impact on the world through simple initiatives they’ve seen through. However, for every kid who gets involved in a mentoring and entrepreneurial experience like Youth Venture, there are hundreds more, both kids and adults, who have great ideas and passion but need support to get things done.  Let’s all be changemakers too by reaching out.