Paris Souza has been involved with Boys and Girls Club of Manhattan since of February of this year. BGC is an after school care place for elementary school children and middle schoolers. They also have summer programs in the elementary schools or at their main office on 5th street. BGC’s main goal is to help kids with homework, play a lot of games, teach them healthy ways to deal with problems in their lives, a safe place for kids to be, and somewhere where they can make healthy and happy friendships. Souza works there, and helps elementary school kids with homework and how to go navigate important life lessons. She also regularly attends BGCs teen-nights every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 until 9. Teen-night is where local teens are welcomed to hang out and enjoy doing fun stuff while helping clean up the community.

“I love the junior staff program they started during this summer so that teens could get a job. It helped me make good friends there,” Souza said.

Youth of the Year is a competition for teens all across America to raise awareness of problems that teens see all around them, and how to successfully end those problems. The competition selects five regional winners, and one national military youth winner.

The Nationals take place in Washington D.C. and the winner then becomes a spokesperson for BGC until the next year, when the competition starts again all over. They also receive scholarship money for when the winner is college ready.

Souza decided to try and enter her topic into the competition. Her topic was about racial inequities in the youth population and how it affects them.

“I feel very strongly about this because I feel like it holds kids back from education,” Souza said.

The winners are going to be chosen at the end of this month for local winners who will move on to districts.

“If they don’t go to college they can’t get a good job, and if they don’t get a good job they won’t have a good life. It’s just a bad cycle,” Souza said.

The winners are going to be chosen at the end of this month for local winners who will move on to districts, and then on to nationals.