Sample Community Leadership Team (Warrior Program)

It's important to involve other people in the running of your program, beyond you as the person with the idea and also beyond the sole community coordinator.

This diagram shows who you might want on your community leadership team. In the Warrior Program, the community leadership team consists of:

• 4-5 x youth leaders (young men) – appointed for 12 months at a time
• 1 x Community Coordinator
• 2 x adult mentors
• 1 x Elder guide

As you start to get your team in place, pick good people who care about youth and will be good role models. Take care in this process. In this stage, you will identify a community coordinator, adult mentors and Elder guides. You will interview and select initial youth leaders. You might also want to identify others in the community who can support the program – e.g., by sharing knowledge or hosting a Warrior field trip, providing in-kind support like gear or space, or providing funding.

Remember that as you involve others in your process some elements of your vision might change and that is ok / great. As this idea grows from an individual idea to something that the community can really get behind, you need to leave room to include others and their perspectives so that they feel ownership / buy-in and want to support / participate in the program. The goal from the beginning needs to be to grow this from an idea sitting inside one person to a community initiative.