YR Stories: Ryan Beal

My first Youth Resources experience was in the spring of 2008. My friend, JoBeth Bootz, was the Teen Advisory Council Program Coordinator and invited me to attend a meeting to potentially become an adult advisor. I’ll admit the last thing I wanted to do was wake up early on a Friday morning to attend a meeting at 5:55am, but after my first TAC meeting I was hooked. It was inspiring to see a group of high school students so passionate about becoming strong leaders and more civically engaged through community service.

My almost ten years of volunteering with Youth Resources has truly changed my life. YR is the organization in which my wife and I are truly passionate and champion to everyone we know. Being around the students in YR’s programs has made me a better person, community servant, and leader. I have been able to see first-hand the impact the students are making on our community each and every day. This group of over 1,000 students, which participated in YR’s four programs in the 2016-2017 school year, completed over 9,000 hours of service with more than 50 local organizations. These stats show just a portion of the impact YR has on our community each year. In 30 years of existence YR has had a positive impact on tens of thousands of students who are still giving back to their community today as adults.

I have been a YR volunteer long enough now to have the pleasure of seeing our former students doing great things in our community as adults. As I am fond of saying, seeing our former students still giving back to our community as adults is why I volunteer with YR.

I am now fortunate enough to serve on the Youth Resources’ Board of Directors as board chair. I truly feel honored to have the opportunity to represent this organization and the students involved in our programs. It is a great pleasure to work with a group of people on the board who are passionate about YR and want to give back to the organization.

The reason I serve on the board can be explained by a message that YR had on one of their shirts a few years ago. That message was, “Believe there is good in the world. Be the good”. YR’s programs and students are the epitome of this message. As a board member, and now board chair, I want to do everything possible to help YR be able to continue to “be the good” in our community.

Ryan Beal is Youth Resources’ Board Chair. He is employed at Cresline Plastic Pipe Co. as the Central Region Sales Manager.

To make a gift in honor of volunteers and advocates like Ryan, visit youth-resources.org/YRday.