Summer Search
Developing Everyday Leaders
Summer Search sends underserved teens who show potential leadership skills to individually appropriate summer programs on scholarships and provide year round mentoring. “We look for resilient and altruistic kids who want to succeed and help others, but who have been faced with tremendous hardship and adult responsibilities at an early age. These students dream of interrupting the cycle of negativity in their lives, but they lack the tools and the opportunities to change their futures." Students are nominated by teachers to be selected by the Summer Search team. Collaborating with over 100 summer experiential education programs worldwide they offer a vast array of opportunities including; wilderness leadership programs, academic enrichment on college campuses and community service. After two summer programs as sophomores and juniors, seniors receive access to other private resources, including scholarships for SAT tutoring, college and financial aid counseling, computers for college, and internships that lead to professional opportunities. Upon graduation from high school Summer Search students receive ongoing support as alumni.
What prompted Linda Mornell (founder) to start this organization?
In 1990 Linda Mornell’s daughter attended a rigorous summer program with Outward Bound. Mornell, an adolescent counselor in private practice, saw the value of experiential summer trips, but realized how few minority and low-income students were enrolled in the expensive programs. Mornell then solicited scholarships from Outward Bound and similar programs, and 14 students received scholarships. That first year, struck by the difficulties that the kids faced in reconciling the tremendous experience of personal growth on their summer programs with the roadblocks of persistent poverty in their home communities, Mornell began to redefine Summer Search to include a direct mentoring relationship with every student. When the first students became seniors, Mornell recognized the need for concrete future-building services, and enlisted the help of college and financial aid counselors. In this opportunistic and resourceful way, Mornell developed an original and comprehensive youth development program.
Often summer programs offer a student an opportunity to have a significant "spiritual awakening" or breakthrough type of experience. Can you share an example of one with us?
(This is an essay written by one of our students upon coming home from one of his summer programs)
The Moment
Dear Summer Search,
I am an 18-year-old young man. I was born in Vietnam and have been in the United States for six years now. I am a senior at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School and will graduate in June 2005. In m family, I am the youngest of all. I have two sisters and a brother. I did not live with my siblings until I was ten years old because I lived in a refugee camp with my grandparents. In 1996, we moved back to Vietnam from Malaysia to live with them, but only for two years. Even though I only lived with my sisters and brother for two years, they still love me and I love them very much.
Malaysia is the place that influenced me the most for who I am today. There we lived in a prison-like compound. Six or seven people shared one room that was a part of a long narrow building in an encampment that was surrounded by two metal fences, one of which was topped with rolled barbed wire. The compound had a large door to the outside world but most people could not escape once they entered. People could only get out when they were about to step through the gates of heaven. One of my feet had already stepped through those gates of heaven because when I was a kid because I had two tumors, in my neck and in my armpit. I could go outside of the camp because the local hospital did not have the right equipment to make surgery. Having the chance to leave and see what was outside made me feel like I lived in a cage.
I lived in Malaysia for many years but the day that I remember the most is when the Malaysians used the smoke bombs and force to make the Vietnamese go back to their country. On that day, all I saw was the thick layers of smoke, I found a different pain; the physical pain as well as the logical pain realizing that the people in the camp had to go back to the country that they had once fled from.
That day I also heard sounds of sorrow that I had never heard before; sounds of crying babies, kids calling out for their parents and parents calling out for their kids. There were some people yelling things such as “there is a pregnant woman bleeding here.” The images pull my tears and wash away the good memories of the place that I once thought was my home. The sounds that made me shake will always stay in my mind as well as my heart. I had always wanted to do something to help them but I had lived in a cage so long that I didn’t understand how I could reach outside of my own box and help others, until I became a Summer Search student.
This year Summer Search sent me to spend 3 weeks on an Indian reservation in Montana with a community service program called Visions. Sometimes the reservation reminded me of Vietnam and Malaysia. It was not only hot but it is also is a poor place. There is no transport station for people and the water there isn’t clean at all. On the reservation, we did a lot of community service, including building a playground, building picnic tables and organizing a weeklong summer camp for children. Because of our group effort, the children and the people in northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana are happier than ever. It was very hard work but when I heard the children’s laughter, I had a smile in my heart where the screams used to be.
When I lived in Malaysia I dreamed of a life where birds can stretch their beautiful wings and fly to anywhere that they want. The feelings of stretching my wings the first time in my life has turned me into a person who loves to fly. Although I left behind the barbed wire in Malaysia, I still felt like I lived in a cage in Vietnam, and even in America. I didn’t understand what I could do to help others or what I had to offer them. Summer Search has helped me to understand that I can take down the walls that surround me now and when I do that I can help other people too.
Summer Search is like the teacher to me because it has held and pushed me to fly out of my nest. Without Summer Search, I would never have a chance to stretch those wings.
Thank you,
Huy
How do you stay connected with students after they finish their summer program? And along those lines, what happens when they return to their "real life" and how can their experience sustain them throughout the academic year?
Summer Search mentors students on a weekly basis, and our methods are significantly different from the popular concept of mentoring. Summer Search mentoring is not structured around social activities, but around purposeful conversations. Mentors provide a nonjudgmental and supportive space for students to talk about their lives and their struggles. Mentors also demand a high level of responsibility from students, challenging them to examine their mistakes and correct the potentially self-defeating behaviors and attitudes behind them. Finally, Summer Search mentors are full-time staff, providing a consistent relationship with each student. Most students have the same mentor the entire time they are in the program, and stay in contact with that mentor as alumni.
Research shows that the most effective youth interventions work with kids for at least one year. Summer Search invests in students for the long term – from sophomore year of high school through college, and even beyond. Most youth agencies work with students for a fairly short period of time – from under a year, to all the way through high school – and have a concrete duration. This means that once a student “exits” the program, they no longer have access to the services the program provides. Summer Search provides ongoing support on an as-needed to ensure that alumni do not slip through the cracks after high school.