Submitted by tara.granke on Tue, 2016-03-01 08:05 TU Teens Youth Camps & Academies Fishing with kids Vote Up Down +11 + P1150127.JPG Headwaters Director, Franklin Tate, invites chapters and councils to recommend a TU Teen to the 5th annual Teen Summit which will be held at Georgetown Lake, MT this summer. By Franklin Tate TU’s Headwaters Youth Program is built upon a model called the Stream of Engagement. We want young folks between the ages of 5 and 22 to find programmatic “side tribs” into the Headwaters. Whether it is through Adopt-a-Trout, Scouts, Trout in the Classroom, TU’s Summer Camps and Academies, or the TU 5 Rivers program, our hope is that we get youth involved and committed, before moving them down the line toward lifelong leadership, membership and stewardship within TU. This model would never have worked without TU Teens and the TU Teen Summit, which was started in Pennsylvania in 2012. We went straight to the source to ask opinions about membership, long-term involvement, teen lifestyles, and other topics. The Summit is the ever-important bridge event between the time that a fourteen or fifteen year-old learns to fish at a TU camp or academy, and the moment that same teen starts to fill out college applications and transition into TU’s 5 Rivers program. This is the event out of which TU’s Youth Leadership Council was born. Do you know of a teen that could benefit from attending this year’s Summit? This year’s event, the 5th Annual, will be held on Montana’s Georgetown Lake June 19th-23rd. We are looking for dedicated teens that love TU and have demonstrated capacity for leadership. Not all teens who apply get accepted to the Summit. Applications are now available and will be accepted until the application deadline of midnight April 4th. Applications, FAQs, and a Summit Fact sheet can be found at www.tu.org/teensummit Teen fly fishers are about as fired up and committed as anyone you know. They are the ones whose rivers and streams will feel the full brunt of our decisions fifty years from now, so they take this work very seriously. But above all, they are, hands down, a joy to work with and fish with. They want a place at the table, a hand in today’s and tomorrow’s TU. Stop and think about it: there is no one else but them. They are the future of this great organization. Franklin Tate is the director of TU's Headwaters Youth Program.