Today we’d like to introduce you to Celeste Salanon.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Youth Impact Texas originally started as a small club at the Dallas International School that my friends who go there (I go to Greenhill) started last year. Over the summer, the President (Siena Piper) and another of the co-founders (Emma Piper) switched schools to Parish Episcopal School and decided to make the *club* (we weren’t sure what we wanted it to be yet) not affiliated with any one school. They invited me to join their old club (once called DIS cares) and after extensive work on our mission and our goals we founded the 501(c)(3) non-profit Youth Impact Texas along with Ariana Steer, Clarisse Delmaire, Rebekah Massey, and Cristian Drescler (take a look at our website: https://www.youthimpacttexas.org/) October of 2024. Now, we are excited to welcome any highschooler living in the DFW metroplex to join our non-profit and become a volunteer!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We have run across a few obstacles since the creation of our non-profit. The main one is finding more eager volunteers to join us and expanding our base into all parts of the metroplex. As we’ve started hosting our volunteer opportunities, it would be fantastic to have a higher turnout. Another challenge is internally, as a board of co-founders, continuing the evolving process of slightly changing our mission and trying to find, with experience, what’ll work best and what inspires us.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
All of our co-founders are currently high-school Sophomores, something we’re all very proud of is being able to juggle a heavy workload, running a non-profit, and many extracurriculars.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to me is doing my best to level the playing field for everyone when it comes to getting into college. As a first-generation student (my parents immigrated to the US), I know firsthand that specific demographics are disadvantaged regarding college applications. They don’t have the same access to resources and opportunities as others, and their parents don’t have the experience that others might have. We know that a rigorous and strong education is the key to upward mobility and setting yourself up for success. By providing volunteering opportunities catered to youth and helping youth, we want to inspire others to do the same.
Pricing:
- Please donate however much you can to our amazon wishlist that’s linked to our Instagram bio (right now we’re hosting a fundraiser for another non-profit called Refresh and we’re trying to donate as many hygene products as possible for youth in North Texas who don’t have access to it)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.youthimpacttexas.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Youth-Impact-Texas-61553254687424/
Image Credits
N/A
There are additional photos on our website and instagram.
