DeKalb County high schoolers to visit area nonprofits

SYCAMORE – Area youth who helped raise funds for local nonprofits will take a field trip to those organizations in September to see directly how volunteer efforts aided their fellow community members.

Youth Engaged in Philanthropy will host an informational meeting at 3 p.m. Sept. 10, featuring a field trip to DeKalb County nonprofits that received money from the youth-lead organization earlier this year.

DeKalb County Community Foundation Donor Services and Marketing Director Noah Nordbrock is Youth Engaged in Philanthropy’s staff advisor. Nordbrock said he hopes the group will have about 85 area youth as members of the philanthropy organization this year – 35 to 40 of which he expects to be new members.

“It’s free, it’s for all youth – all high school youth in DeKalb County – and our idea is we want to teach members about positively impacting and improving the quality of life for youth in DeKalb County,” Nordbrock said. “We sort of do that through grant-making, but then we also do that through [wanting] to build leadership into our members through communication, social and analytical skills.”

In May, the youth philanthropy organization awarded about $14,000 worth of grant funding to 13 different nonprofit organizations in DeKalb County. On Sept. 10, tenured and prospective members of Youth Engaged in Philanthropy will take a field trip to those organizations to see how those dollars are being put to use.

Nordbrock said members of the philanthropy organization enjoy seeing how the organization put the grant funding to work, especially those who went on site visits earlier in the year to decide where to allocate the funding.

“What they would then do is come back with information, so at the April YEP meeting some of those older YEP members would then talk about – ‘Hey, we went on a site visit, we think this is a great grant application, here’s who they’re going to impact the community, and here’s the why,’” Nordbrock said. “When they get to see that in action in September it’s pretty cool for them. They do look forward to it. They experienced it last year, so we always look to them for leadership too, just to kind of help with new members to answer any questions.”