Youth Members Come Together for STEM Learning, Creative Expression, Leadership, and Community-Building
This summer, The Clubhouse Network will facilitate nearly 20 Regional Teen Summits across Clubhouses in the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe. These Regional Teen Summits are opportunities for youth to gather for an in-person event that fosters community-building, cross-Clubhouse collaboration, leadership development, technology skill-building, and college/career pathways exploration.
On June 11, The Clubhouse Network hosted the first of the Regional Teen Summits. 16 youth from 5 different Clubhouses in the San Francisco Bay Area converged at The Best Buy Teen Tech Center @ Boys and Girls Clubs of San Leandro. Programming included an Engineer for the Week Workshop hosted by Meta for Education (formerly Facebook), a Film Editing Workshop, a Video Project showcase, and more.
Jose Carlos Montesinos, Coordinator at The Best Buy Teen Tech Center @ Boys and Girls Clubs of San Leandro reflected on the success of this first summit. He said, “It was an incredible experience for everyone involved. We strongly feel we have set a base to continue the collaboration between local Teen Tech Centers and Clubhouses in Silicon Valley. We are looking forward to becoming the hub for this upcoming collaboration.”
We strongly feel we have set a base to continue the collaboration between local Teen Tech Centers and Clubhouses in Silicon Valley.
Traditionally, The Clubhouse Network Teen Summit has been a global event, uniting teens biannually since the inaugural summit of 2002. The last in-person summit occurred in 2018, while an online summit was held in 2021. Plans are already underway for the next global Teen Summit. Regional Teen Summits will continue through July and August of 2022.
Teen Summit has always been a part of The Clubhouse Network’s overall strategy of building and strengthening global community. The Network convenes its professional staff for an Annual Conference and offers quarterly trainings to new staff. Clubhouse staff can connect through a private online hub. Clubhouse youth can connect with other youth and mentors around the world in The Clubhouse Village, an exclusive online learning network for sharing projects and ideas.
Highlights from each summit will be shared throughout the summer on Clubhouse Network social media pages.