The Smart Step Youth Association, now in its third year, has quadrupled in membership since last summer and has big plans to match its greatly increased manpower.

According to a Smart Step founder and executive director Nick Kang, 76 youths in Grades 7-12 have joined the group for the summer.

"It's turned into a full-time volunteer job for me now. It's a lot of work," says Kang.

Kang, a former Merritt Centennial, founded Smart Step in the summer of 2009 with the intent of "creating a better name for youth."

The association recruits youth leaders from the community and develops their ability to plan, organize, and lead by putting together positive activities for other youths and the public at large.
Smart Step will also host workshops for members examining topics like respect, resume-building, and goal-setting.

"A lot of the workshops are leadership-based," says Kang.

Speakers from the area will discuss social issues to improve members' understanding of challenges in the community as well, says Kang. Among them are Jim Laidlaw of the Kamloops Phoenix Centre, who will talk to the youths about the social issues that contribute to drug and alcohol abuse.

"A lot of the time in high school, they keep on hearing about the problem…but they don't know the causes of the problem," says Kang.

Smart Step started with 12 students from Merritt Secondary School in 2009. The next summer, that figure grew to 18. This year, membership ballooned to 76 youths, and Coquihalla Middle School (CMS) students are involved for the first time.

Experienced Smart Step members visited classrooms at both Merritt Secondary School and CMS throughout the school year to introduce the group and drum up recruits, Kang explains. He credits Smart Step's largely grassroots nature for its growth and success.

"It's all about giving the ownership to the kids, then they feel responsible to their peers. It'll keep them coming back week after week."

This year, Smart Step has been organized into four sections: Smart Step Entertainment; Smart Step Sports; the Smart Step City Squad; and Smart Step Junior, for CMS students.

Returning from last year, the city squad is again responsible for organizing Paint Our City Clean, where volunteers clean up graffiti on Merritt. The sports section, which put together weekly intramural sports for children last summer, will instead host a youth sports week this August.

Smart Step Entertainment and Smart Step Junior are new initiatives.

"That's something we talked about at the end of last year," says Kang of involving CMS students.

"They'll be going to the exact same workshops and speakers. The only difference is they don't have a community project of their own."

Meanwhile, the entertainment section is responsible for organizing fun youth activities at Smart Step's new home base, the Merritt Teen Centre. The section has established a youth council operating from the teen centre that meets for the first time Wednesday.

"They're more of a peer-outreach group," says Kang.

As Smart Step has grown, so too has its wing of experienced youth leaders, ranging in age from 16-19. A dozen leaders assist Kang with co-ordinating the various sections.

Like Kang, they are volunteers as well. He says he realizes that someday, his job and the duties of the leaders may warrant pay, but would like to preserve Smart Step's grassroots nature for as long as possible.

"If we can run it without that, it would just keep things a little more honest.

"Everyone within the organization is a volunteer. That's what's unique about this organization. It's completely people-powered."

A $10,000 grant from the Davis Project for Peace and a smaller past grant from Kang's college in Minnesota, St. Olaf, funded Smart Step this year.