Introduction to Torch Club

Defining Leadership and Service

Leadership is more than directing a committee, planning an event or speaking to a group. Leaders are people who think for themselves, express their thoughts and feelings honestly and directly, act on their own beliefs, and inspire others to do so. An act of leadership could be taking charge of a situation or a group, but it could also simply be helping someone else without being asked.

Contributing acts of service for others or your community is an important demonstration of leadership. Youth who are involved with community service or who volunteer in political activities are more likely as adults to have a strong work ethic, to volunteer and to vote. Volunteering is also associated with the development of greater respect for others, leadership skills and an understanding of citizenship that can carry over into adulthood. By developing youth leadership and providing opportunities to give back through volunteering, Clubs support young people to become productive, caring and responsible adults.

Leadership and Service Core Program Area

Leadership and Service has been a foundational area of focus for the Boys & Girls Club Movement since the beginning. Leadership and Service provide all youth with the opportunity to build critical leadership skills that support their development and enable them to contribute to their community in meaningful ways.

Outcomes: Leadership and Service programs and resources develop leadership skills in youth by increasing their confidence in their leadership skills, their ability to use leadership skills to create meaningful change and their motivation to become leaders and inspire others. All programs sequentially build core competencies across age groups in three primary domains: self-leadership, leadership with others, and leadership in the community.

Leadership and Service Skills

Self-Leadership:

Knowing oneself and analyzing one’s emotions and actions in order to self-regulate and empower oneself

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Advocacy
• Goal-Setting
• Identifying and Solving Problems
• Evaluating

Leadership with Others:

Strategic engagement and communication across diverse groups, perspectives and settings in order to create collective meaning and inspire others

• Communication
• Collaboration with Peers
• Collaboration with Adults
• Empathy
• Perspective-Taking
• Conflict Management
• Goal-Setting
• Identifying and Solving Problems
• Evaluating

Leadership in the Community:

Building relationships across different systems in order to bring groups together for a shared goal

• Inclusion
• Social Responsibility
• Goal-Setting
• Identifying and Solving Problems
• Evaluating

Youth Development Professionals Role in Leadership Development

The role of youth development professionals is to provide a safe and positive environment to encourage youth and support them as they build skills. Youth development professionals create opportunities for youth to develop a sense of belonging by recognizing their contributions and accomplishments to help them build relationships with their peers.

Use a Youth-Centered Focus

Youth development professionals should use youth-centered approaches to reframe conflict, acknowledging young people’s feelings and helping them see the connection between their emotions, behaviors and consequences to help identify their own solutions. Youth development professionals should support leadership development by asking effective questions, listening actively, and encouraging and modeling successful action.¹

Ask, Listen, Encourage

All youth can and should build leadership skills. 

Ask effective questions:

• Ask lots of open-ended, relevant and challenging questions to move thinking forward. At the start of the project, provide questions that help youth detail steps to build out an idea. In later stages help youth think about potential problems they may encounter.
• Make sure every youth in a group has input. Ask for specific youth input on developing and leading activities.
• Ask questions that help youth identify and leverage their individual strengths.

Listen actively:

• Show that you’re listening through eye contact and reframing what was said.
• Identify and help youth name emotions.
• Hold back and let youth speak.

Encourage and model successful action:

• Explain your decision-making process so that youth understand the decisions that are made. Engage with youth by asking them to share their own decisions.
• Provide honest, timely, and strategic verbal and written feedback because this helps further youth ideas and provides opportunities to grow.
• Encourage youth to take on new leadership roles.
• Share experiences of your own challenges and model appropriate and safe ways to address personal difficulties.
• Develop and maintain expectations and roles for both yourself and youth.

Practice Positive Youth Development to Create Inclusive Clubs

In order to fulfill our mission, Clubs must create safe, positive and inclusive environments for youth of every race, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic status, religion or cultural belief. By creating inclusive environments at our Club, we improve the overall experience for all young people. When youth development professionals use the Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development, they help ensure all youth:

• Feel represented
• Have a sense of belonging
• Can meaningfully participate in programming

As you implement Torch Club, consider and use strategies that will help youth feel affirmed and engaged with Club experiences that meet their 4 needs and abilities.

Positive Youth Development Supports Character and Social-Emotional Development

Boys & Girls Clubs support Good Character and Citizenship as one of our three priority outcome areas. Character is the way one behaves when no one is looking. In Boys & Girls Clubs, we seek to build six character traits as defined by CHARACTER COUNTS! They are: respect, fairness, trustworthiness, responsibility, caring and citizenship.² When youth development professionals and youth practice skills and exhibit behaviors related to character, they are on their way to enjoying positive experiences, relationships and environments. The demonstration of good character by youth development professionals and youth is important to building supportive relationships and safe, positive environments.

Positive youth development provides direction for how you interact with, engage and model behavior for youth. You get to shape the lives of young people every day. As a result, you set the expectations and show youth what the essential character traits – caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness – mean, and how they look. These character traits come to life when youth practice social-emotional skills like teamwork, conflict management and emotional regulation. Young people use skills to lead themselves and others, as well as demonstrate positive attributes in citizenship, like community engagement and voting.

You can start to build character using “caught and taught” approaches. Youth “catch” social-emotional skills when they observe youth development professionals modeling appropriate behaviors, and when they interact with peers. Youth can also be “taught” skills to build good character in program areas when the skills are explicitly introduced and practiced through activities and sessions. Use this formula to help understand how character develops over time:

Staff Model Good Character + Youth Practice Skills Regularly = Character Development

To build character traits, include many opportunities for youth to practice social-emotional skills. These include skills related to:

• How youth feel about themselves
• Youth’s relationships with others
• Youth’s ability to regulate emotions
• Youth’s ability to solve problems

To access more information, see the referenced handout, Practicing Social Emotional Development Skills to Achieve Character Development in Program Basics, by visiting BGCA.net and seaching for “Program Basics." It will show you the specific social-emotional skills that young people should practice in order to demonstrate positive behaviors as described by the six character essential traits.

Overview of Torch Club

Torch Club at a Glance

A Torch Club is a club within the Club that focuses on youth leadership and service. Each Torch Club has between 6-15 members of youth ages 10-13 who participate in service experiences and projects developed and implemented by Torch Club members themselves.

1. Program Purpose: provide youth with the ability, confidence and motivation to make meaningful change
2. Audience: youth ages 10-13 (tweens)
3. Skills Focus:
   • Leadership (self, other and community)
   • Service Learning
4. Competencies:
   • Be aware of personal beliefs and interests
   • Speak up and share unique points of view
   • Listen to others’ opinions/perspectives
   • Negotiate conflict
   • Share accountability
   • Contribute to decision-making/problem-solving
   • Take responsibility for various tasks/roles
   • Recognize the impact of efforts in the community
5. Strategy: youth-led/peer-driven small group (6-15 members) leadership/service club
6. Member support:
   • Torch Club advisor 
   • Leadership sessions
   • National charter
   • National project
   • National awards
7. Resources:
   • Torch Club Corner
   • Keystone Club
   • Teens Take the Lead
   • Youth of the Year
   • Service Recipe Guides
   • Career Launch
   • Junior Staff

Program Purpose/Strategy

The overarching purpose of Torch Club is to foster in youth the ability, confidence and motivation they need in order to lead meaningful change in themselves, with others, and in their communities. Through the youth-led, small-group club structure, members gain first-hand experience in leadership and service as they work together toward a shared goal.

Skills Focus

Like all of BGCA’s Leadership and Service programs, Torch Club focuses on the development of leadership and service skills, such as self-leadership, leadership with others, and leadership in the community. In addition, the program stresses important service-learning competencies by investigating and researching, planning and preparation, goal-setting and action steps, reflection, and demonstration/presentation. Finally, members gain civic engagement competencies by being involved in real-world experiences, developing their voice, and seeing themselves as agents of change in their Club and community.

Member Support

The Torch Club program is designed to support members as they develop the skills to become life-long leaders and change agents who serve their communities. Member support includes:

• An adult Torch Club advisor: to guide youth in all aspects of club and project management
• Leadership and Service sessions: to give youth instruction and experience in basic leadership skills
• A national charter: to connect to the BGCA National Torch Club Advisor
• An annual national project: to unify Torch Clubs nationally in completing a project
• Annual national awards: to provide incentives and recognition for Torch Club youth nationally

Leadership Competencies Developed in Torch Club

Like all BGCA Leadership and Service programs, Torch Club develops competencies in three separate domains. Here are examples of how the Torch Club experience specifically builds competencies in each domain.

1. Self-leadership: By participating and making contributions in regularly scheduled Torch Club meetings, members have ongoing opportunities to become aware of their own beliefs and interests, to speak up and articulate them, and to share their unique points of view.
2. Leadership with others: In collaboration with peers and an adult advisor, youth work toward a shared goal, members learn to listen to others’ perspectives, to respect their opinions, to negotiate when there is a conflict, to share accountability, to contribute to decision-making and problem-solving, and to take on various roles and responsibilities as needed.
3. Leadership in the community: In implementing Torch Club projects, members have the chance to work with many individuals and groups, fostering an appreciation of diversity and the importance of inclusion. Members also develop a sense of social responsibility as they see the impact of their efforts in making a positive difference in the community.

Resources

A wealth of BGCA resources provide ongoing support for the Torch Club experience:

• Torch Club Corner – a dedicated web community on BGCA.net with resources for running a Torch Club
• Keystone Clubs – BGCA’s leadership and service experience for teens ages 14-18
• Teens Take the Lead – a step-by-step guide to implementing service-learning projects
• Youth of the Year – programs for leadership recognition, readiness and development
• Service Recipe Guides – projects for getting youth engaged in their communities
• Career Launch – a curriculum to help youth explore careers and prepare for employment
• Junior Staff – guidance and support to prepare youth for a career in the Boys & Girls Club Movement

For more information on these resources, see Establishing a Torch Club in the Torch Club Advisor's Manual.

Target Audience: Tweens

The Torch Club program is specifically designed to address the needs of younger adolescents at a critical stage in their lives – the “tween” years encompassing youth between the ages of 10-13 as they are navigating the transition from childhood to adolescence. The following are highlights of the key developmental milestones of young people in the tween years.

Physical

• There is wide variation at the onset of puberty, resulting in early and late maturity. Girls begin puberty earlier than boys.
• The physical changes of puberty become outwardly apparent, and children are more aware of their changing bodies.
• Body image and eating problems can sometimes begin at this age. 

Cognitive

• Youth develop greater cognitive abilities for logic and reasoning. Gradually, they can think more abstractly about future possibilities, and consider more complexity.
• Changes in the brain make youth more sensitive to rewards (e.g., money, food, peer approval) and exciting and emotionally charged experiences. These changes lead them to engage in what adults would consider risky behaviors. These risk-taking behaviors can increase when youth are among their peers.

Emotional

• The parts of the brain responsible for emotional response develop more quickly than the parts of brain required for self-control. This leads to strong emotional responses and increased moodiness.
• Youth become more self-conscious and worried about what others think about them. This also leads them to think that they are unique and that people don’t understand their experience.

Social

• Peers’ attention and approval is very important. Young people feel intense peer pressure and may develop “best friends” or form cliques.
• At this stage, it becomes emotionally important for youth to have and keep friends.
• Youth interact and develop friendships with members of the opposite sex. They become interested in romance and may start dating.

For more information on developmental stages, visit BGCA.net and search for “Program Basics.”

Torch Club Content Area

The most effective Torch Club programs allow for a variety of relevant learning experiences that incorporate the three domains of leadership – self-leadership, leadership with others, and leadership in the community – through the following content areas: 

Good Character and Citizenship

Service projects allow youth to identify Club and community needs. As they develop programs and activities to meet those needs, youth learn to contribute something of value, and they demonstrate loyalty, caring, kindness, good citizenship and civic engagement. Through service to Club and community, members become socially responsible leaders now and in the future.

Academic Success

Projects in this area expose youth to new ideas and experiences, which encourages them to be curious learners and gives them a chance to better understand their own skills and interests while being of service to others. Self-awareness, getting along with others, setting personal goals and learning to solve problems are just a few of the benefits club members derive from structured educational activities.

Healthy Lifestyles

Projects, events and experiences in this program area develop a young person’s ability to adopt positive behaviors to nurture their overall health and well-being by focusing on nutrition, physical fitness and social-emotional skills.

For more information on projects in these service areas, see “Guiding Youth in Project Planning” in Establishing a Torch Club in the Torch Club Advisor's Manual.

Using the Manual and Targeted Program Guide

This Targeted Program Guide is designed to compliment the Torch Club Advisor's Manual to provide a convenient, one-stop resource for establishing and running a Torch Club. It is informed by, and builds on, the excellent work Clubs are already doing to foster leadership and service in youth through the Keystone Club and other programs. It is structured to support you not only in managing the procedural aspects of running a Torch Club, but also in developing your role as a Torch Club advisor. In the table below, the green fields indicate which content is found in the Torch Club Advisor's Manual.