YOKE’s mission statement is “to impact middle school students by equipping passionate, faithful mentors to help those students discover their identity and purpose in Christ.” Where does that leave those middle school students once they move on to the 9th grade? Our Future Folk program is meant to fill in the gap between YOKE Kid and YOKE Folk. In Future Folk, our high school students meet monthly to learn important leadership skills, including communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. Then they get the opportunity to put these skills into action through serving with YOKE Folk at the middle schools!
We currently have more than 75 high school students involved in our Future Folk program across all our areas, with meetings held in both Knox and Jefferson counties. Currently, we have Future Folk representing almost every middle school club, including every single school in our West Knox area! Right now, in Jefferson County, we have a group of siblings all involved in YOKE. The two oldest are now Future Folk (with the oldest having just gotten baptized this month) and their youngest sibling becoming a YOKE Kid. It is such a unique opportunity to be more than an older sibling, learning to also be a leader and mentor for them. It is amazing to see the growth and impact that YOKE can make in the desire to become servant leaders to students even some that are inside their homes!
YOKE Kids grow up to be Future Folk who are led to be YOKE Folk. This is our goal for our middle school students: that we can empower them in Christ and encourage them to be leaders for Him. When our Future Folk become upperclassmen, they can have the unique opportunity to become YOKE Folk. Hadley Henry has been around YOKE most of her life! Her parents were team leaders even before she was a YOKE Kid herself. She has since gone on to serve as a Future Folk and is now part of the team that is reopening our club at Gibbs. She says that the Future Folk program gave her the chance to “stay connected with my middle school’s club and start training to become a leader!” She expresses that YOKE made a difference in her life as a middle schooler, planting the seed that she would want to be a YOKE Folk one day. Being a Future Folk better equipped her to reach that goal this year!
Our Future Folk program is intentional about helping our high schoolers become the leaders of the future! We do this through our leadership training program, honing in on leadership skills and teamwork they will use with YOKE, but also the workplace. They also get to use these skills through shadowing our YOKE Folk weekly during club. They learn expectations on how to lead games, lead silly songs, even lead a talk! Last year, we had a Future Folk retreat where the students got to spend intentional time with other Future Folk but also learned more about what a servant leader is. This year we are adding a leadership adventure to the National Parks of Utah led by our executive director!
What a joy it has been to watch this program continue to grow and thrive as we have seen the need to add Future Folk-specific Team Leaders in the past couple of years! It is amazing to see God work through these students and the unique opportunity we have to see them grow from 6th graders into mature servant leaders! They are further helping our mission of connecting middle schoolers with faithful mentors, becoming the mentors they themselves looked up to once upon a time.