Lately, you have been receiving reminders to Save the Date and attend this event. What does it mean to Fund the Future? What is ALPS?
Members of the Rotary Club of San Francisco created Action Leadership Program for Students (ALPS) to provide training for today’s high school students and tomorrow’s leaders and the opportunity for Rotary to become a premier catalyst and provider of youth leadership development at the high school level for sophomores, juniors, and seniors in San Francisco and throughout Rotary District 5150.
Phase I of ALPS was completed on May 31, 2019. The Rotary Club of San Francisco Foundation awarded $100,000 to enable Phase 2 to move forward and retain a paid professional working 30 hours a week to establish the overall vision for the Program, screen and hire the faculty, help with student recruitment and Interact Club engagement, create online networks for students to remain in touch, partner with the School Districts involved, integrate the content into all District-wide conferences for youth and adults, streamline the organization of RYLA, and more. Currently, pilot sites for the Program are in development at Interact Clubs in three counties: Marin (Redwood High School), San Mateo (South San Francisco High School), and San Francisco (Lincoln and George Washington High Schools). Another pilot is underway in partnership with Boys Hope Girls Hope, a San Francisco nonprofit helping at-risk youth fulfill their potential.
The overall leadership framework is based on The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership as derived from the work of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in their best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge (Jossey-Bass, 2008). Sessions occur weekly for one hour using action learning approaches to ensure maximum engagement with students. In addition, students select civic projects in their local community they want to learn more about and address. They conduct research, meet with politicians and government agencies, nonprofits, and others to more fully understand an issue, and ultimately come to conclusions about how the issues might be addressed. This is a major opportunity for Rotary Club engagement, leveraging the experiences and connections of Rotarians to community issues, related networks, and nonprofit and civic leaders. Bringing the voices of the generations together to develop community solutions is a key element of ALPS.
To continue ALPS into the future, we need your support and invite you to our Fund The Future event.