JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas -- Forty-three of the best and the brightest members of Air Force Youth Programs gathered in San Antonio, Texas, June 13-17 for the Air Force Youth of the Year Camp.
The teens attended seminars designed to develop leadership and communication skills, engaged in team-building activities, held a talent show and developed target areas for youth programs throughout the enterprise to follow next year. They also demonstrated the Air Force core value of service before self by spending two days volunteering at the San Antonio Food Bank.
Youth of the Year is a partnership program between the Air Force and Boys & Girls Club of America. It is facilitated by the Air Force Services Activity, which is part of the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center at JBSA-Lackland.
"To be selected as the installation youth of the year, youth leaders are judged by essays, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews, all of which should highlight their demonstration of leadership and service, sustained academic excellence and commitment to healthy lifestyles," said Stacey Young, a member of the policy division of the Headquarters Air Force Child and Youth Programs office in Washington, D.C. "We really want to celebrate them and their accomplishments, while giving them an opportunity to further develop their leadership skills."
Young said 21 of this year's Air Force Youth of the Year installation winners have won at the state level against other military youth and are moving on to compete at the regional level. Each state-level winner receives a minimum $5,000 scholarship, and each regional winner receives a minimum $10,000 scholarship, renewable for four years. The six regional winners are finalists for overall Military Youth of the Year.
The 2015 Military Youth of the Year, RianSimone Harris, represented Vogelweh Air Base, Germany. She was the Overseas Region Youth of the Year. She credited the confidence she gained through Youth Programs with getting her through a difficult freshman year at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, with all A’s.
“I had just moved back to America after 12 years straight of living in Japan and Germany. I was going to college for the first time, living away from home; just changing environments completely,” she told the teens during the awards ceremony. “I had gone from an environment where, in a military community there are so many different faces and different values and different cultures and people from all over, to a very private, very affluent conservative Christian university where I was the only black person in my entire residence hall. And so it was very easy for me to feel that I didn’t belong there.
“I know if it weren’t for my youth programs and if it weren’t for my amazing advisers in the youth program, I would not be where I am today.”
As Military Youth of the Year, Harris is an ambassador for military youth. Last month, she said, she met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. “I am so happy that I get to travel around the world and share my story, and share our story.”
Keynote speaker Maj. Gen. Bradley D. Spacy, director of expeditionary support for the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, compared and contrasted life when he was growing up in an Air Force family with what today’s teens experience.
“I grew up on the core values before we called them core values: integrity, service and excellence. Those are what I learned from the people in the youth program and the youth centers. The positive role models were teaching us that we can be anything we wanted to be,” he said.
Dorian Holnes, one of the award ceremony’s master of ceremonies, has attended Youth of the Year camps since 2012. He is one of the state winners and represents Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina. He plans to attend the College of Charleston to study film.
“The camp is a great bonding experience because - even though we’re from overseas, we’re from Germany, we’re from Japan, we’re from Alaska, we’re from all over - we all have things in common,” he said. “The best experience we had was discovering we’re all connected in ways you never knew before but that’s what military life is like. You are always connected with everybody else.”
First-time camper Alyssa Price, who is representing Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, said the camp is an opportunity to explore new interests and meet amazing teens. She faced more than the usual teen challenges last spring, going from vice president of the Keystone Club, president of the junior class, playing varsity volleyball, captain of the cheer team and on the soccer team, to being restricted from going to school on base for a month for security reasons to evacuating to Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
“We got the call 29 March at 10:30 p.m. And the actual evacuation date was the 30th of March. There were eight flights that went out that day, and I was on the second one,” she said.
She said Ramstein was very welcoming, but going to a new school environment is always a challenge.
“Being outside of school for so long, I was really just trying to get to the end of the year. That was so tough for me. I took three AP classes and just trying to finish up the year with a good and strong GPA was really difficult,” she said.
Price said she has learned to have faith in herself and her resiliency, and has set goals to be active in Ramstein’s Youth Program and at her school.
Editor’s note: Nineteen other installation-level winners were unable to attend the camp. The National Military Youth of the Year will be announced on Sept. 9 in Washington, D.C.