Team F.R.E.S.H.

    Team FRESH, once known as the Mayor’s Youth Council, is a part of youth and teenager’s lives in Fall River, MA.  We help youth by bringing caring adults, safe places during vacation, healthy starts, and opportunities to serve their community.  Team FRESH now has about twenty five members and is still expanding.  The members work hard to make the city of Fall River a positive place and even helped make it one of the top 100 best communities in the United States.  We have fun with what we do and love helping the youth and teens of our city.  Team FRESH is now a part of YOUth VOICE, which stands for Volunteer Organizations to Initiate Community Engagement.

    Our youth group could not have done this without our advisors; Christian McCloskey, Jamison Souza, Jennifer Souza, Brendan Sullivan, and Ine Ogagan.  We can all now say that Fall River is a positive place thanks to the work we have done. 

    We received training in America’s Promise and leadership skills.  We used these skills to facilitate the Mayor’s Youth Forum.  This was an event for youth to express their feelings on what needs to be changed in our community.  This helped establish a strong foundation on which we hope to build a flourishing community of promise that builds the character and competence of all youth by fulfilling the Five Promises.                    

    Unlike other communities, we have been involved from the beginning.   We were challenged to bring the Five Promises to the community.  It was up to us to include the adults.

Some of their highlights of the past year include:

•coordinating and facilitating Mayor’s Youth Forum VI

•organizing and participating in such community events as the Make A Difference Day Funapalooza, Funfest and Fun-r-fest, and Neighborhood Festivals.

•helping to establish a super youth group, YOUth VOICE, to unite the efforts of youth leadership groups

•assisting in organizing and facilitating the CommUNITY Service Project which brought together over 100 youth during Martin Luther King Day Weekend

developing the www.fallriveryouthzone.com to

connect youth and youth

groups to each other and to positive

opportunities