Youth Spotlight: Skye Taylor
“You can do more than what you think, even when you are as young as thirteen years old.” Skye promotes this message to the youth in her community as she continues to encourage her peers to take a “few hours out of a week to help people in need.”
As a high school sophomore in Louisiana, Skye Taylor is one of the youngest volunteers in her local Red Cross chapter. She first started her Red Cross journey after helping with the 2016 flooding in Louisiana. As an eager youth looking for ways to help, Skye saw a Red Cross truck providing relief efforts and immediately took the opportunity to reach out to her chapter contact and get to work. Since that summer of her sixth-grade year, Skye has gone above and beyond to make tangible differences in her community through her work with the Disaster Cycle Services of the Red Cross.
Skye serves as an inspiration and role model to the youth in her community as she continues to take the initiative to educate others about disaster preparedness. Skye noticed that many of her peers at school were affected by fires, so she organized disaster preparedness presentations at her local middle school. She distributed more than 150 smoke alarms and made sure that every student had a smoke alarm at home. When she saw that there was a special needs student with a hearing impairment, she requested bed shaker smoke alarms from her Red Cross chapter and assisted the family to ensure the student’s safety. “Skye saw a need in her community, and she stepped up and got to work. She is an outstanding leader!” says Gwendolyn Hilliard, a Preparedness & Disaster Cycle Services Volunteer and the Youth Engagement Lead for the Louisiana Region.
There is no stopping Skye. She actively participates in the Pillowcase Project, where she teaches elementary school students about disaster preparedness. She even started the Red Cross Club at her high school and continues to encourage youth in her community to volunteer. “In my community, youth don’t see volunteering as something they can do, but with the Red Cross Club, I can reach out to them and let them know that they, too, can make a difference in someone’s life.”
Whether it is volunteering at a disaster shelter, installing smoke alarms, participating in the Pillowcase Project, or teaching her peers about disaster preparedness, Skye doesn’t allow her age to limit her passion to help people in need. She is a great reminder that the meaningful participation of youth volunteers has a positive impact in the community.
The Red Cross truck that sparked Skye’s curiosity in 2016 has grown into a lifelong love for service and humanitarian work. Skye hopes to expand her work with the Red Cross and increase opportunities for youth volunteers by hosting blood drives and leadership development activities in the future.
Thank you for your service, Skye, and we wish you the best of luck on your Red Cross journey.
