Adding a Youth Seat to Your Board

Posted on by Department of Housing and Community Development

Cultivating new volunteers and perspectives is an ongoing process for every local Main Street program, and this effort can even begin with high school students.

Downtown Wytheville, Inc.’s (DTW) youth initiative started when Todd Wolford, Executive Director, was transitioning into the role from his previous career in recreation. Prior to joining DTW, Wolford ran a summer camp, led community programs, and coached high school football. Since he was used to working with young people, he wanted to extend an opportunity for DTW to include their perspectives by proposing to add a youth seat to the board.

“I wanted our organization to hear their point of view about everything happening downtown.”

Todd Wolford, Executive Director, Downtown Wytheville, Inc.

The first youth board member, Charlie Jones, joined DTW in 2018 as a rising senior in high school. Based on his input, the organization extended its successful Community Business Launch (CBL) entrepreneurship program into a pilot spinoff, known as the Invest Youth Business Scholarship (IYBS) program, which was was funded through a Virginia Main Street (VMS) Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) in 2019. Like the CBL program, IYBS introduced high school students to entrepreneurship through a series of classes, teaching them what it’s like to run a small business and planning for business success. DTW awarded two students $2,000 each for books and other college related expenses.

“This in turn lead to us creating the new Youth Ambassador program with two high school juniors and two high school seniors. We anticipate having a youth-led sub-committee that will lead special projects and youth led events in conjunction with new and existing events.”

Todd Wolford, Executive Director, Downtown Wytheville, Inc.

DTW’s Youth Ambassador program has an annual budget of $2,000 to build programs integrated with the organization’s annual Main Street workplan.

The investment in young leaders is starting to pay dividends for downtown Wytheville. Shortly after graduating from James Madison University (JMU) in 2022, Charlie Jones joined DTW as the organization’s Administrative and Events Coordinator. Welcome to Virginia Main Street, Charlie!