FCCLA promotes youth leadership
By Wade Coggeshall

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s one thing to talk about the importance of community service. Quite another to actually perform it.

That’s what makes the Indiana Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) so integral to the subject. The statewide organization, with 100 high school chapters, bills itself as the “ultimate leadership experience.”

About 70 schools were represented at the FCCLA’s State Leadership Conference, conducted Thursday through today at the Adam’s Mark Hotel.

The Indiana Department of Education invited Brownsburg’s Steve Pyatte to be a guest speaker at this year’s edition. Pyatte is an author, motivational speaker, and filmmaker — not only notable for his shaved head, long goatee, and inked-up arms, but for preaching against the common missteps he himself once made.

“They were looking for a different type of speaker,” he said.

Pyatte focused his talk on leadership and community involvement, which aligned with the conference’s theme of “CSI: Community Service Intelligence.”

“One of my creeds is giving back love and respect,” Pyatte said. “That’s the subtitle of my first book. It’s all kind of based on that. At their age, they can still give back, even though they haven’t had that many years to take much. They’re giving back at an early age, which I wish I had been able to do.”

Each year the National FCCLA partners with a philanthropic organization for a community service project. Jen Staley, state advisor for the Indiana FCCLA, said the past two years were spent helping the American Cancer Society on a national outreach project. But this year the FCCLA took on its biggest challenge yet.

The group collaborated with Feed the Children, an international organization that fights hunger. Each state had to raise $7,200 to participate in the effort. To make that goal, student members conducted myriad fund-raisers in their respective communities.

“I heard one school did a duct-tape-your-principal-to-the-wall contest to raise money,” Staley said.

That money funded a semi-truck full of supplies for 400 needy families in the Indianapolis area. Feed the Children worked with an organization called Heartfelt Warmth to determine who would get vouchers.

The semi arrived at the Adam’s Mark Thursday night, where students unloaded boxes and personally handed them to their recipients.

“The neat thing about this project is that members can hand the boxes to the families,” Staley said. “They get to see the impact they made.”

Pyatte is used to delivering tough-love speeches to troubled youth and adults. He did no such thing with this gig.

“These are the good kids,” Pyatte said. “They’re leaders in their fields already. The FCCLA is a great place where kids can be involved.”

Indiana FCCLA website

Wade Coggeshall e-mail