Braden Taylor
Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year inspires fellow students
The kid who was once going to just watch the clock until it was time for his parents to pick him up is graduating from high school this spring as Youth of the Year at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Saline County.
Braden Taylor, 18, who’s about to graduate from Bauxite High School with a band scholarship, didn’t like the club when he first started attending in summer 2011.
“I had aged out of my summer camp, and this was a new environment that I wasn’t used to at all,” he said. “The camp was spread out and big, and we were grouped with kids with similar personality traits and interests. At the club, you’re not forced to interact with anyone; it’s up to you.”
Taylor recalled that he thought his plan of waiting on people to come to him would work. Instead, he would end up sitting in a corner waiting on his mom to come pick him up. He slowly started mingling with people by doing something he was passionate about — picking up trash. In his East End community, he would perform this community service.
“So I would walk around the club and pick up trash,” Taylor said. “Then one day I went in the kids’ learning center and asked the teacher, JoAnn Best, if I could take her trash.”
He met a friend that day, Emily Jackson, and connected with Best.
“She took me under her wing, and I learned about the club and began getting more involved,” Taylor said. “She inspired me to get out and do more, which forced me to interact with other kids.”
Taylor was “quite the young manager,” Best said. “He took it upon himself to organize the younger children, helping them keep busy. I can’t say he has turned into an amazing young man, because he was always amazing. He is a reader, manager, organizer and friend. I know he’ll do great things.”
Taylor plans to attend the University of Arkansas at Monticello to pursue a music education degree. His dream is to be a band instructor, while also performing in a band on the side. He plays the trumpet, with jazz music as his passion, and is also taking bass guitar lessons with the club’s music teacher.
When he was 14, Taylor became a member of the club’s junior staff. Krystal Askew, program director for the organization, said the program is for kids who think they would be good staff members or good leaders at the club.
This summer will mark the fourth that Taylor has worked at the club.
“I like to have something to do, and I could work anywhere, but I love the teaching aspect of working here and interacting with the staff and kids. All my friends are either in band or into computers, so it’s neat being friends with people I otherwise wouldn’t imagine interacting with.”
Taylor works at the Teen Club, at the Boys & Girls Club’s former location on Cox Street in Benton. The Boys & Girls Club now has a state-of-the-art facility in Benton’s new Riverside Park. And like all staff members, Askew said, Taylor wears many hats.
Askew is in charge of the Youth of the Year program for the Saline County affiliate. There are 29 affiliates in the region, and each selects a Youth of the Year. Each receives a Boys & Girls Club scholarship this is matched by the local affiliates.
The best Youths of the Year compete on a state level, of which Taylor was a participant. Askew said she was more nervous than Taylor to compete at the regional level. More of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy, Taylor wasn’t worried about his speech and wasn’t as rehearsed as other participants, such as one student who had memorized three pages of copy.
An equally smart and witty kind of guy, Taylor impressed Askew with his speech, which was genuine and from the heart with a positive focus.
“I told him throughout to just be himself and be genuine, and that’s what he did,” she said. “Other kids shared their hardships, and Braden has his share of them, and he’s not ashamed of them, but it’s not like him to make that his focus. It’s fun to see the positivity in Braden and how his hardships have made him look at life through different angles.”
Each candidate was asked to expound on the question, “What do you want for youth in America?”
Taylor said he would like to see youth come together.
“The country itself is divided. You have to love yourself first. Life is full of stepping stones. First you walk, then run, but you gotta love yourself through it all.”
Through his bad times with illness in his family and other predicaments, Taylor said, it’s important to have something to lean on.
“When everything falls, you gotta have something central to fall back on. Finding togetherness through family or whatever your family looks like is the key.”
The club provides that sense of togetherness and family as well.
“It’s an equal playing field here, and no one is above anyone else,” Taylor said. “We’re all a part of something.”
Taylor’s time at the Boys & Girls Club has taught him “that the most powerful thing on Earth is someone who wants change.”
He can’t wait to continue spreading that message wherever he goes, he said, from college to his future classroom.