A short testimonial-style YouTube video ("Teen Leadership Bootcamp") featuring Betsy Guerra and a teen named Sam discussing the program’s impact. Betsy describes the Bootcamp as teaching teenagers leadership tools, how to empower others, choose friends, and perform random acts of kindness; Sam credits the program and Betsy’s coaching for helping him overcome anxiety using a "five second rule" (count down 5–1 to act) and for providing ongoing support and mentorship. The overall tone emphasizes empowerment, confidence-building, and practical interpersonal skills.
Chapters
The Teen Leadership Bootcamp is an opportunity for teenagers to learn and implement tools, skills, perspectives that are going to determine how they live the rest of their lives and what relationships they choose to engage in. In the Teen Leadership Bootcamp, we learned how to empower others, how to choose friends, and how to be leaders in our community. My favorite part about it was the performing random acts of kindness, because it really taught me that being nice wins and that being nice is a gift that you can give someone.
So when I first started group, I was this really anxious, shy little person, and Betsy basically taught me this thing called the five second rule, which what you do is you count down from five. So if I was anxious about something or going up to someone, talking to someone, I would just go, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And on one, I would just do it. And it was crazy because I would be so fearful before I did it and while I was counting down. But it's like an instinct. Once you get to one, I just went. And it's helped me so much because I use it for everything that I do now with Betsy, if something happens to me over the weekend and I don't have a session planned with her, I can just text her, call her, and she'll call me back, and she'll just, like, she'll let me vent to her and I can tell her everything. And I feel so comfortable when I'm around her, and she's such a positive person. And just like, when she enters the room, everything in the room lights up, and she's just genuinely such a happy and amazing person that it just makes you want to be happy.
It's empowering, it's exciting, it's fun, and it makes you feel like you have control over your life, that you can determine what that's going to look like. They learn that so much of our future is in our hands, in the way we view life, in the way we interact with one another, in the choices that we make. So then learning all these skills and having all the tools that they've acquired through our group is going to help them trace a better life and become a better version of themselves.
