A Week In Chicago: Pinedale Teens Earn Their Spot at BGCA's Keystone Conference

In case you haven’t heard, Keystone is a club within Boys & Girls Club that gives teens ages 14-18 opportunities to make leadership decisions, serve others, and engage in experiences that help to shape their knowledge of academic, career community service, and teen outreach initiatives and projects.

Those who participate can earn their way to the National Keystone Conference and be given a charter level (silver, gold, legacy). These indicate how many community service hours they've completed, how broad their influence is in the community, and what kind of impact their final project had. (P.S.- our project was a podcast you can listen here).We took six of our members to the Keystone Conference as Gold Charter members-- a first since 2011! The theme was Connect, Create, Captivate. Breakout sessions centered around two topics. The first was Teen Mental Health with sessions such as “Coping and Connecting with Others” and “Finding Light through Teen Depression”. The second topic was Teen Issues & Awareness with sessions such as “Unpacking Stereotypes” and “Finding Comfort in Your Skin”.

Guest speakers at this year’s conference included Common (rapper & actor), Chamique Holdsclaw (WNBA legend and gold medalist), and Alex Webber (Motivational speaker & TV host). Overall we had an amazing trip with some extra perks of winning raffle prizes along the way.  

Outside of the conference, we had the opportunity to explore the beautiful city of Chicago. We explored the Magnificent Mile, China Town, Willis Tower and many sites the city had to offer.