Malden High school offers a variety of opportunity for students to get involved and one of them being the YMCA leadership club. “It helps building the skills you need to be a leader,” says senior Danny Chen, the president of the YMCA club. He also explains further about how the clubs helps him from speaking in front of people to managing a crowd. The members also gain volunteer hours which is great for forming their resume, besides being able to connect with more people like them and making new friends. “There is something beautiful about a story of people who barely know each other, come together in one place and…benefit the community,” says junior Brian Tong, a member of the club.
This year, the club faces many challenges, one being that, at the start of the year there were “many new officers” with limited experience in “handling new members and the membership fees,” explained Tong. Another problem is that the majority of officers were in the process of applying to college and couldn’t contribute to the club as much as they did before because, “most of the officers are seniors,” says senior Yining Mao. In addition to members’ schedules being full, the club faces yet another obstacle as “there are a lot of people joined this year, up to a hundred members,” says Chen. Despite the struggles, the leaders try their best to give the members as much attention and opportunities as possible.
“The club is pretty well and more organized than last couple years,” Chen stated. Chen explained that this year, the club came up with an idea that will help building a club of productive members. Everyone who wishes to be a part of a club will be required to be in an interview in which the leaders will decide whether to keep someone based on their answers. Besides interviewing people to filter out the people who joined, this year, the club improves as its members learn to “balance between [their] schedules and force [themselves] to meet deadlines including going to events and officer meetings,” Mao explains. The club also starts to make spreadsheets for volunteer hours and google docs for outlines for every meeting, making it easier for the members to keep track with what is going on within the club.
The club’s projects mainly revolves around the Malden community. “The more events, the more people we help, the more smiles we bring to the community and within the club,” explained Tong. Many events include ones like “the family nights at the YMCA, which is one of the big events,” says Mao. The club does not only help the members becoming future leaders but also the Malden locals as well. Tong expresses that,“[he is] honored to be a part of this club and being able to lead and help others to become leaders in the community themselves.”
