President’s Message – April 2022

As we enter life after the COVID-19 pandemic, I want to look back for a moment and thank our UNITY board members, commissioners, coaches, volunteers and community partners who were instrumental in enabling us to keep our doors open when our community needed us most. UNITY successfully operated during the pandemic when schools were not in-person and leagues were not operational. We stayed safe but we stayed working too, and we stood together to fight racism, violence against our youth and organized a free food distribution to help UNITY families in need. For those reasons, I am very proud of the collective effort to understand our youth’s needs and address them head on.

During this time of societal turmoil, we reflect on where we’ve been and what still needs to be done. UNITY leadership realized that we have the opportunity to grow, and we are striving to be a more engaged organization inside and outside of sports. In order to hold our youth accountable, we have to start to be accountable to them as the village that supports them. We have to do more than talk—it is time for action. Please consider volunteering your time or expertise to UNITY to help us be the best organization we can be. We need coaches and volunteers in every program. We will be involved with several community events this year and need your help. You can donate towards our programs or special funds if you don’t have time but want to help. We can provide SSL hours to students for their school’s volunteer requirements as well.

Remember…

WE ARE UNITY

Julian McElveen

President, UNITY Youth Development