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The communities of California's Central Valley will
face many challenges as they grow and change in the
coming years and leadership will be necessary for future
success.
To show young people how they could be forces for change
and support the development of strong communities,
the Great Valley Center offered CATAPULT, a program
designed to support and encourage Central Valley youth
as future leaders. CATAPULT was started with a grant
from  The
James Irvine Foundation. In its formative years under GVC, the CATAPULT program received generous support from The
Stuart Foundation, Citibank, Bank
of America, the Cowell
Family Foundation, Land
O' Lakes, AT&T,
and Bank
of the West.
The CATAPULT program was successfully completed in 2007 and is not currently active.
CATAPULT adopted program model
is designed to promote sustainability of ongoing regional
youth-led leadership programs. As part of the
program model, five established agencies that were
either interested in establishing a youth component
in the organization, or enhancing what they currently
have, were recruited to be community partners.
Each
community partner organization then works with a team
of four high school youth throughout the 11-month program.
They attend retreats in which they will spend time
with new friends developing a leadership framework.
Then they explore their own communities. With adult
mentors standing by, participants learn how to scout
out issues, and find ways to fix problems through
policy-related community service projects.
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