Team Roles & Responsibilities

To keep our community running smoothly and help us cultivate a spectrum of leadership and collaboration skills, everyone will “run point” for a specific responsibility each day. While youth take the lead, mentors stand-by to support and nurture youth leadership efforts. Details for each role appear following the assignments.

Leadership Assignments

Scroll to see the job descriptions for each role.

	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs
Youth Roles
Breakfast	Mia	Ta’Shaun	Richard	Charles	Jamil	Deci
House Monitor	Jokobi	Mia	Ta’Shaun	Richard	Charles	Jamil
Navigation	Olli	Jokobi	Mia	Ta’Shaun	Richard	Charles
Safety	Deci	Olli	Jokobi	Mia	Ta’Shaun	Richard
Schedule	Jamil	Deci	Olli	Jokobi	Mia	Ta’Shaun
Lunch	Charles	Jamil	Deci	Olli	Jokobi	Mia
Dinner	Richard	Charles	Jamil	Deci	Olli	Jokobi
Shop & Showers	Ta’Shaun	Richard	Charles	Jamil	Deci	Olli
Mentor Roles
Breakfast + House	Ashley	Tom	Venera	RJ	David	Tom
Nav + Safety	Ashley	Venera	RJ	David	Tom	Venera
Logistics	Ashley	RJ	David	Tom	Venera	RJ
Lunch + Dinner	Ashley	David	Tom	Venera	RJ	David

Leadership Strategies

Youth

Youth are responsible for leading most aspects of the summit. Approach your leadership role with a growth mindset and a spirit of adventure. Think about not only your role but also the big picture, and imagine how all the pieces fit together to create the best environment for our community and those we encounter. Challenge yourself to expand your comfort zone as you develop your skills.

To be the best leader possible, ask yourself:

What are my steps to take to ensure this role is fulfilled efficiently and completely?
Who do I need to coordinate and collaborate with to be successful?
What are my resources and limitations?
Do I need to plan ahead, and what’s my fall-back plan?
How can I measure my effectiveness as a leader and our success as a group?
How can I be creative in this role, innovate it next time, and help my successor succeed?
Your mentors will be asking themselves: How can I most empower youth leaders?

Mentors

Mentors are responsible for general oversight of youth leadership. The tenor of this oversight is authoritative rather than authoritarian, and should be designed to nurture development of youth-leadership skills. Check out the youth-role job description for explanations of each category. Additionally, encourage youth leaders to coordinate across roles wherever applicable and to think ahead. In response to youth questions—unless it’s an emergency situation—the best approach will generally be to ask variations of the following questions:

“How can you puzzle this out?”
“What resources are available to help you puzzle this out?”
“Do you think you’ve covered all the bases?”
“How can you be sure you’ve covered all the bases?”
“How can you measure your success?”
“What would you do differently next time?”

Job Descriptions

Youth

Breakfast: Breakfast will be “grab & go” so that we can clear out of the shelter to jump into our day and free up the space for others. Your challenge is to include protein, exclude processed sugar, make it easy for the group, and ensure that the kitchen and eating areas are spotless when we leave for the day.
House Monitor: We will be sheltering in the sanctuary of the church, cooking in the kitchen, and eating and hanging out in the courtyard. Your challenge is to ensure that all the areas we touch are pristine before we leave for the day so that others may enjoy the space.
Navigation: Our itinerary takes us all from San Francisco to San Jose and all over Silicon Valley, and we’re restricted to bikes and public transportation to get there. Your challenge is to ensure that we can get everywhere we need to on-time.
Safety: We’ll be visiting lots of different kinds of places via public transportation and bike, which raises a spectrum of issues for both people and property. Your challenge is to ensure that all the members of our group and all our belongings are secure.
Schedule: Our itinerary is full of incredible opportunities every day, and lots of them. Your challenge is to make sure that everyone knows what’s up for the day and that we honor all the amazing people we’ll meet by arriving and departing on-time.
Lunch: Some days lunch is on us, and some days, we are being hosted for lunch. Your challenge is to make sure that we eat enough, that we emphasize whole foods and local tastes, and that wherever we eat, it looks great when we leave.
Dinner: Dinner is as varied as lunch, and we’ll have the opportunity to cook together and share our meal with others on more than one occasion. Your challenge is to ensure that we eat as many local flavors and whole foods as possible. Never heard of it?!? Awesome, let’s try it! And, as with the other meals, your role includes making sure that our dinner spot looks great after the meal.
Shop & Showers: Logistics are complicated by our experiment in “working homelessness.” We’ll only be able to buy what we can carry with us on our bikes, and we’ll only be able to shower when we have time to bike to the gym. Your challenge is to ensure we have all the provisions we need and that we’re as clean and presentable as possible.

Mentors

Breakfast + House: Breakfast requires thinking ahead to provision; so, be sure to support the youth leader to coordinate with the shopping leader the day before, and emphasize the outside aisles of the market. It’s cheaper, healthier, more interesting, and more creative to eat whole foods. Avoid pesticides, processed sugar in all its forms, and GMO/conventional wheat and corn when possible. We have free reign of church spaces, but the campus is large and will be in “high use” mode during our stay; so, a small and intentional group footprint will be key. Empower leaders to practice “everything in its place” and “better than we found it” approaches to living and enjoying the wonderful spaces—outdoors and in.
Navigation + Safety: Moving people, bikes, and gear across a diverse landscape as much as we’re going to do it will be no small feat, and this is our highest stakes mentorship role. When possible, empower youth leaders to rise to the occasion, but if both you and the youth leader are in doubt, escalate the question to David and Ashley immediately. No question is stupid except the one we don’t ask and are sorry we didn’t. Call 911 for emergencies and then loop in Ashley and David if you haven’t already.
Logistics (Schedule + Shop & Showers): The details involved to keep us on track for our itinerary and both provisioned and presentable are dizzying. Empower youth leaders to be on top of logistics by helping them cultivate planning and time management awareness and skills.
Lunch + Dinner: This role changes depending upon the day and the location. Empower youth to plan ahead for provisioning and recipes, and remember “whole foods, local foods, sustainable foods, enough food.” It’s cheaper and healthier to shop the outside aisles of the store and to avoid the aisles with processed options. Avoid pesticides, processed sugar in all its forms, and GMO/conventional wheat and corn when possible.

Leadership Assignments

Leadership Strategies

Youth

Mentors

Job Descriptions

Youth

Mentors

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