YAAS: Pizza with the Police

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

The idea for a police program came to me after reading a Facebook thread in one of the programming librarian groups I'm in. The original poster asked the group for help naming a one-off program where teenagers get to mingle with members of the police force in their city under the relaxed circumstances of pizza and video games. The point of her program was to show teens the police officers' human sides, and provide a low-stress environment where they can ask the officers questions about what they do for teens and young adults in their city. 

After reading the post and all the fantastic responses, I contacted our PD that same day to ask about having an officer or two come out for a similar program. It turns out that our police force not only has a special department dedicated to youth outreach, but they have a cadet program and provide free summer day camps in leadership and pre-police work for teens in the summer!

Our program didn't involve video games, but our guests played some videos showing what the Youth Leadership Academy entails and answered a lot of questions our group had about their jobs. We all enjoyed pizza for dinner, and a couple members of YAAS took home information about getting involved with the Mesa PD programs. I'm really excited about this new community partnership, and hope we get to do more things with the police department in the future!

Our group with officers from the Mesa PD youth outreach department