“I want to be someone that inspires others,” Kaylee, a second grader at Lift for Life Academy in St. Louis, recently wrote. Both Kaylee and her classmate Camryn hope to change the world.
Their teacher, Zoe Luke, wants to help the second graders in that goal— and she believes sending them to a young leadership camp is the first step.
The five-day camp, offered by Envision Experience, is designed to help promising young people build leadership skills they can take back to address problems in their community. After Luke learned about the conference, she immediately nominated Kaylee and Camryn. “Pretty much straight away I knew it would be these two girls,” Luke says.
A fourth-year elementary school teacher, Luke launched a GoFundMe page to pay for the girls’ tuition and transportation for the summer 2024 conference. The GoFundMe is a part of a larger fundraising campaign Luke is running that includes selling T-shirts and applying for any scholarship or grant she can find. Luke promises to do “whatever it takes to get the girls to the conference.”
Kaylee wants to be a dancer … and a gymnast … and a teacher … and the first female president. Camryn wants to be a doctor. Both girls are overflowing with passion and an unwavering determination to be something special. “That means I must be nice to others and keep learning, face challenges, motivate me and NEVER EVER GIVE UP," Kaylee wrote in her scholarship application.
Camryn added that being a doctor would allow her to save lives and make enough money to help homeless people, a population she is passionate about serving. “Being a doctor, I will be able to help people twice,” Camryn wrote. A class project centered around activism sparked Camryn’s interest, and Luke says Camryn is now working with a local non-profit to raise awareness around the struggles of unhoused people in St. Louis.
Luke boasts about the leadership roles the girls have taken. “Camryn is a natural leader. She is always asking to help. Always seeing to see if people are doing what they should be doing, following the rules,” she says. “Kaylee is extremely mature. She looks after people, and she is highly intellectual.”
In addition to benefiting Kaylee and Camryn’s individual futures, Luke emphasizes the impact attending the conference would have on the community.
“It doesn’t matter that they’re children in St. Louis, they belong there and are able to show the rest of the school that they can do whatever they want,” Luke says. She repeats something Camryn told her one day in class: “It doesn’t matter that we are kids, we're going to change the world.”
Kaylee and Camryn need $7,000 to attend the conference. To date, the GoFundMe has raised more than $1,400.
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