These Nonprofits Had Questions Only These Teenagers Could Answer

DreamLarge ends a hands-on, weekend-long program for teenagers to figure out how to solve real local challenges.

Teenagers here have great ideas, and on Sunday, the adults were ready to listen, with pens and paper in hand.

Local nonprofits had a few problems, you see, and more than two dozen or so teenagers had a spare weekend and about five or six open microphones in an auditorium at the Ringling Center of Art and Design.

“It’s an unexpected feeling to have people pay attention to us,” said Lei’Asha Battle, 17, a Riverview High School student. “They came to us, they wanted to hear from us. Normally, adults think we don’t know any better. We do.”

The problem Battle and her teammates were to address: How do you get teenagers into Urbanite Theatre seats?

Put young people on your Instagram feed. Create a Snapchat and TikTok account. Let teenagers know they can volunteer or do an internship over the summer, her teammates said.

DreamLarge, a benefit corporation that started a decade ago, was the impetus behind the hands-on, weekend-long program during which middle and high school-aged students came together, gently guided by adult mentors, to figure out how to solve real-world local challenges.

The goal of the inaugural collaboration project was to put students in the same room as mentors and nonprofits.

The result was to empower them and show them their ideas have value.

Another problem: How can Hope 4 Communities better reach the thousands of area low-income or homeless children? Translate your website into Spanish and advertise in places young people and their parents hang out, another team said.

Here’s what the adults thought of Sunday’s event.

“Here you’re showing them that their ideas matter, that their unconstrained thinking is highly relevant to the problems the community is facing,” said Anand Pallegar, the founder of DreamLarge. “Together as an organization and community, there is a chance to drive real change if these nonprofits implement what is being discussed.”

Some nonprofits walked away with seed money from DreamLarge and local philanthropists to implement these ideas. Others, such as Urbanite Theatre, came away with a strategic path forward.

“We thought what we were doing in local high schools and on social media was enough,” said Janet Raines, marketing and development director for Urbanite Theatre. “The most important is that we can’t expect young people to come to us; we have to go where they are and let them know who we are and what we offer.”

In the not so distant future, the adults hope to implement many of the solutions presented over the weekend. Many hoped the event inspired the young people to stay in the area when they grow up

Pallegar said he hopes to one day expand the project to multiple times a year, giving greater access for students of a larger pool of racially and economically diverse backgrounds.

“If you can seed it early and show them that there are viable careers and options here, there is a good chance you can stick around because they see the opportunity to build a future here,” he said.

In the not-so-distant future, many of the teenagers hope to collaborate, volunteer and intern at many of the nonprofits. Some teenagers even came away inspired.

Here’s what Violet Sullen, 14, had to say:

“I feel like it narrowed my dream a bit,” she said. “I want to be a visionary leader like Steve Jobs, but like, I want to bring civility back into BMX competitions. They’re so nasty nowadays.”