A journey of gratitude and personal growth: A reflection on the impact of a transformative youth program

Photos courtesy of NYSCI.

By Folashade Teriba, high school student and explainer at the New York Hall of Science.

This blog is part of the Afterschool Alliance's new “Collective for Youth Empowerment in STEM & Society” (CYESS) initiative. This series of blogs highlights examples of programs working at the intersection of STEM and civic engagement. We are excited to showcase the systemic change young people can make in their communities when their afterschool programs support them to layer action onto their STEM learning. If you would like to know more or submit a blog about your youth action program, please contact us.

I’m Folashade Teriba, a high school student working with the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) as an Explainer in the Science Career Ladder (SCL) program. I heard about the SCL through school. I applied because I wanted a job that was education and science based. Although I was interested in science, I didn’t have a close relationship with it. I found science a hard topic to understand, but I was very open to learning about it.

As part of the SCL, I participate in a fellowship focused on public health careers which is supported by a National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (NIH-SEPA)*. I always wanted a career related to medicine, but it was only recently that I decided I want to focus on women’s health. I want to create change in the community and improve the health of women so that they are not neglected anymore.

Before my participation in the fellowship, I had this strict thought of what public health was and a lot of the concepts that I learned throughout the fellowship. I feel I have a unique and open-minded lens on public health now. School is very rigid and traditional in how we are informed about career paths. The fellowship gives us the freedom and opportunity to learn about new things and explore on our own; it is not a forced idea or consensus put on us.

As part of my fellowship experience and beyond I hope to communicate to other youth that public health is a huge, huge, huge, field. There is a range of career paths that can connect to what different youth are interested in. Public health has a lot to do with your community; we should all be focusing on trying to better and improve our communities because if we all work together, we can see things change.

My long-term goals in the SCL are to develop new skills, network, increase my knowledge, and increase my communication so that I will be ready for college. The fellowship has shown me the different variety of programs and opportunities in the SCL, different roles that I can play, and how I can grow from them. It has also shown me that there is a bigger picture to everything; it helped me learn about communities beyond my own and understand that everything connects. In the future, I want to study public health and medicine, and by doing that help minority women and improve overall health in communities.

I am thankful for the SCL. I feel my participation has had a positive impact on my character and allowed me to grow as a person overall. It’s given me a job where I can have fun, learn, try new things, and connect with other youth as part of a supportive community.

*This project was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1R25GM142063-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the New York Hall of Science and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health