Sounds crazy, I know. Bear with me, and I will explain why this is a vital concept to the success of NG3 in a community.
At any given public high school in Gwinnett County, there are roughly 25 or more sports offered throughout the year. The most change, growth, and development opportunity offered through NG3 comes through huddle groups, a small group of usually 12 student athletes from a team that meets once a week off-campus. This voluntary group “does life together”, discussing wins and losses in their lives, eating dinner, hanging out, studying the Bible, and creating tight bonds. For an NG3 Director of a school, the goal is to find interested members of the community who are willing to make a difference in the lives of high school student athletes. The design is for volunteers from the community to lead character development lessons or ultimately, start their own huddle groups, with the training and support of the NG3 Director, so they can mentor and foster growth at a more intimate, deeper level. It is this idea of finding volunteers to lead huddle groups from which the slogan 1+1+1=36 originates. By adding 1 volunteer at a time, 12 more student athletes are given the opportunity for real change to occur in their lives, thus the crazy math equation. Simple addition of volunteers equals multiplication of the numbers of young people positively impacted.
At Grayson High School, five members of the community have stepped forward, willing to sacrifice a little time for the opportunity to provide meaningful guidance for high schoolers in their community. The NG3 team at Grayson includes Brandon Sisson and Cliff Hagan who have joined NG3 Director Dustin Mattox along with Darren Stout and Jonas Chambliss in serving Football (Varsity, JV and 9th), Track & Field, Soccer, Lacrosse, Mountain Bike Club and Tennis in the Spring. This group illustrates that volunteers can come from varied backgrounds, professions, and stages of life. Some have been in the Grayson community for over a decade, others only a few years. Occupationally, there are salesmen, men in ministry, business owners, retirees and everything in between. There is no clear mold to which you have to conform to be a volunteer, only a willingness to invest in the lives of young men and women and a respect for the boundaries presented in working with students of public schools, a process with which NG3 leads.
The message of NG3, no matter which campus, can be boiled down to three mantras: 1) Do what you say, 2) Serve others, and 3) Bring change. As a volunteer, you are modeling the second of these pillars in order to execute the third. As more members of the community are bold enough to step up and step out into active roles in the lives of the next generation, real change will occur in our communities. If you would like to know more about NG3 at Grayson, there will be an informational meeting in the theater at Grayson High School in September. Come meet the team and learn more. For more information about NG3 as an organization, or on another campus, please visit www.NG3.org.
Together….we can Be the difference!
NG3
P.O. Box 1429
Snellville, GA 30078
www.ng3.org
NG3 stands for Next Generation: Character Community Change. Their goal is to develop men and women of character to create a positivechange in our communities. NG3 works directly with student athletes in high schools, teaching and practicing the importance of strong core values like responsibility, humility, integrity and honesty. The staff of NG3 works along side the coaches employed by the school, providing a constant presence of reliability and service.
