The YELP Youth Engagement Leadership Program is in its second year now with 17 high school students participating. Youth in this program meet once a month during school hours identifying issues in the community and put their plans into action.  At the beginning of the program year, youth work independently presenting to others in the program their ideas for making a difference in our community.  When they presented their ideas, we realized they all wanted to do something to beautify our City/County Park.  Working with CEDIK, youth looked at many ideas for bringing an interactive mural to the park.  They wanted something that would represent our community as well as be fun for everyone to see.  They designed an interactive mural focused around sports and incorporating our school’s teams of the Rockets.  After each student contributed to each part of the mural, they also decided a way to get the community involved.  They planned to take it to the park and let the kids in our community add their handprints to make up the leaves on the trees.  This in when they created YELP in the Park.  Youth talked to the park board to plan it on a day when all the baseball and softball teams would have their opening day of games.  On this day, the mural was unveiled to allow kids to add their hand prints as well as host a Car Show and have the local animal shelter bring dogs out that were available for adoption.  All of the youth that are involved in the YELP program have a greater understanding of the importance of becoming involved in the community and taking an active part to help make the community a better place.  Youth in this program have been provided with multiple opportunities to step up into leadership roles, let their voice be heard and feel confident about the difference they are making. Because of the success of the YELP program, the high school and community is fully supportive of what the students are doing and learning and are very pleased with the life skill opportunities they have been given.