“Through the arts, community-based learning, and leadership development, we provide underserved youths with structured and sustained opportunities to tap into their talents.”
Elaina Verveer is no stranger to the multi-faceted fields of youth leadership, youth-focused community organizing, and program and curriculum development.
Currently – as executive director of Empowerment Center of East County (EC)^2, a grantee of the foundation’s Community Trust – she brings to bear extensive experience that lends itself to the mission of EC^2 (formerly Project YES), namely, to cultivate the capacities of young people and their families to create positive social change in themselves and their home communities.
“Through the arts, community-based learning, and leadership development, we provide underserved youths with structured and sustained opportunities to tap into their talents,” says Elaina of what has become Lafayette’s predominant youth services agency. Specifically, alongside other evidence-based strategies, EC^2 draws on the arts and service-learning to foster youth engagement, and to encourage young people to find their voice.
“It’s super critical for us to concentrate our efforts and resources on our immediate community,” continues Elaina, who previously served as founding Public Achievement Director at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she taught undergraduate courses rooted in community-based learning for more than 10 years. She also served as a faculty member and interim director of Naropa University’s Community Studies Center, and as program director and curriculum consultant for Campus Compact of the Mountain West, among other achievements.
“Beyond countywide services, there are very few community-based agencies in Lafayette that support our young people,” she says. “If we look at mental health services, for example, youths often need to go to Boulder, and then transportation can become an issue.
“In response, we’re focused on serving kids in Lafayette.”
Indeed, EC^2 prides itself on being accessible to all, and keeping its programs and services free. “We intentionally house our programs at sites that cater to a more diverse clientele, including young people from low-income backgrounds,” Elaina says. That includes art workshops for social change at Title 1 secondary schools, and plans to expand EC^2 programs and services to a nearby EFAA transitional housing site (the Emergency Family Assistance Center is also a foundation grantee).
“We’re a relationship-based organization that takes the time to really get to know the whole child. That’s the only way to establish trust and reciprocity, and to help young people recover their passions, and their values.
“From there, they can create positive change in their own lives … and in their communities.”
With less than a handful staff, EC^2 serves about 400 young people every year, empowering local youths to lead themselves. “We really believe in near peer mentoring, and a trickle-up approach to youth empowerment,” explains Elaina.
“We want students to see themselves as people who have made positive decisions to achieve their goals – and to deliver their lessons learned to others. Because when young people realize their values and their self-interest, they also begin to identify the intersection between their personal and public lives, and they’re more likely to effect social change.”
Concludes Elaina, “We believe that young people need to be at the table at all times. That’s why we closely adhere to empowering pedagogy where youths have the opportunity to educate adults, and vice versa.”
