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NS State team in finals for Microsoft Competition; vote by June 24

Andriy Shymonyak, a junior in NC State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Poole College of Management, has been spreading the word about the Microsoft Citizenship Challenge for Change!

Shymonyak and fellow NC State students, including Devan Riley, a junior in Poole College's bachelor of accounting program, are finalists in the competition, which continues with online voting through June 24.

If they win, they will apply the prize:

  • To expand their Triangle Youth Leadership Services (TYLS) model to other universities
  • To fund and mentor the ideas TYLS’s high school participants come up with, and
  • To create an elite incubator-type summer program for high potential high school social entrepreneurs

View the team's video and vote daily for Triangle Youth Leadership Services.

About the Triangle Young Leadership Services

TYLS was created in 2009 by Dunn and Mazur to help prepare high school students to solve their communities’ challenges. Both graduated in 2013.

Shymonyak said he got involved in TYLS during his freshman year at NC State after learning of its goals and vision from the co-founders. He said he “realized that what I believe matches up with what TYLS believes.”

Since joining the organization, he has served as a small group facilitator at the Third Annual Triangle Youth Leadership Conference, then was selected to serve on an executive board that would propel the organization forward. “At the Fourth Annual Triangle Youth Leadership Conference, I served as workshop director for the conference. Currently, I am still serving on the executive board of TYLS,” he said.

High school students from across North Carolina are selected from an applicant pool participate in the two-day conference held in Raleigh, N.C.

“Over the last two years, I have seen much success in the organization,” Shymonyak said. Most significantly is the expansion “from a one-day conference to a two-day conference and the growth that this convened,” he said. Also significant are the “individual comments from parents and students as they reflect on their experience and their push to make change in their local communities after departing from the conference,” he added.

Riley became involved in TYLS as a high school student. "I chose to attend the conference because it was an opportunity to get leadership training for college students, and this was unlike any leadership conference I had previously attended," he said.

Collegiate leaders helping high school students on the leadership path 

"I knew it would be a new and exciting experience to learn from people only a few years older than my that were already successful leaders," Riley said. "After attending the conference, everything began falling in to place. I knew that if I ended up at NC State, I wanted to stay involved with TYLS; however, at the time I didn't think I would end up at NC State. Fate played it out a little differently than I had anticipated. In the spring of 2011, I was chosen to be a Park Scholar, the very program that sponsors TYLS, and before me was the road to involvement with the organization."

In his first year as a TYLS volunteer, Riley served as a keynote speaker, a small group facilitator, and a logistics committee member. "I simply couldn't get enough, and the entire time I was brainstorming about what next year's conference could be," he said.

"All summer following my freshman year I stayed on the phone with Steven Mazur and Adam Dunn (TYLS founders) about what I saw for the conference in the future. Oddly enough, they were looking for a new board of directors to ensure sustainability of the organization upon their graduation, and they asked me to be general director. After much deliberation – about three seconds – I gladly accepted and began assembling my new board of directors. 

Hundreds of high school students involved

Dunn said that over the past four years, “we’ve paired dozens of student volunteers at NC State with hundreds of high school students from across the state in annual conferences.

"This past year's conference was a milestone," Riley said. "We hosted the first two-day conference, and our guest speaker, Kevin Miller, captured and invigorated attendees with his stories of success at a young age. Kevin really made students realize that they had the ability to change the world, even in high school."

Conference participants work in teams to problem-solve real-life community challenges through a design-thinking lens, “informed by workshops and speakers trained to hone their creative potential,” Dunn said. The conference ended with the participants presenting “a concrete solution that they, even as high school students, can pursue,” Dunn said.

About 75 high school students from across the state have attended the conference each year, Dunn said, and more than 100 NC State students have volunteered to coordinate these events.

Involvement in the organization has enabled its leaders to grow as well.

"From directing TYLC this past year, I have learned that service to youth is my passion. It's in my blood," Riley said. "I come from a family of public school teachers and community leaders, and after being director, I know this is the path I'm headed (on), too. I aspire to be a professor of accounting at a public, North Carolina university. I owe a debt of gratitude to the people of North Carolina, the public school system of North Carolina, NC State, and the Park Program for all of the invaluable gifts they've all given me over the years, and I intend on repaying that debt tenfold with my service to the State of North Carolina."

About the Microsoft Citizenship competition

  • This conference is hosted by Microsoft Citizenship and targets youth-driven programs led by young adults
  • TYLS is one of 20 finalists; five winners will be selected from the online voting competition.
  • The competing teams have posted a video on the competition website, and viewers are asked to vote for the group they believe best promotes youth and community development.
  • Voting continues through June 24; voters can vote once per email address per day
  • Prizes include grant money, a partnership with Microsoft Citizenship, and a suite of Microsoft products.

TYLS leadership

Serving on the TYLS board of directors are:

  • Devan Riley, general director
  • Adam Dunn, general curriculum director
  • Joseph Bond, administrative director
  • Karen Stabile, co-logistics director
  • Sophie Austin, co-logistics director
  • Andriy Shymonyak, workshops director
  • Alanna Propst, small groups director
  • Steven Mazur, mentor director