Hope. Hope is the feeling that what one desires will happen; an overall perception that one’s goals will be met. Hope, like oxygen, is essential to life. We simply cannot live without it. When we have it, it can carry us. When we don’t… we suffocate.
We believe that hope is a choice—it can be learned and shared, and best of all—it’s free and available to everyone. It doesn’t discriminate. If hope could speak, it would say, “The future is me!” With hope, we understand that there are many ways to achieve our goals, but that doesn’t mean we won’t encounter obstacles along the way. Hope is the mindset that will equip our kids to overcome those obstacles.
We have begun to fan this fire inside all our members here at the Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal by implementing some strategies that allow for this fire to shine bright. We are working with our children to develop a growth mindset (instead of “I can’t do it!”, it’s “I can’t do it YET!”) so they can knock down existing obstacles and blaze new pathways. We also offer opportunities for our kids to become hope builders for others (“she looks sad, let’s go talk to her!”, “he had a hard week, what can we do to help him feel better?” etc.). Our kids understand how sharing hope can make them feel more hopeful, too.
Knowing that we, at the Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal, have a goal for our youth to experience happiness, emotional stability, and hope – what small changes can we make in our day to ensure each child who walks through our physical door, or our virtual one, has the tools they need to be emotionally successful?
This is the question we will be holding onto as we continue to lift each other through this next year.