Hope Is Something We Build
This past month, close to 1000 Grade 5 students and over 100 high school volunteer mentors gathered at the GH Dawe Community Centre for Grow Kids Red Deer 2026, an event I have had the privilege of helping facilitate mid-May every spring for the past 16 years.
On the surface, it was a day of movement, activity, new faces, new spaces, and new experiences. Students travelled through the facility in groups, worked with presenters, connected with high school mentors, and spent the day alongside kids from other schools. For many of them, it probably felt like a fun day away from the regular routine of school.
But underneath that, something much more intentional was happening.
Grow Kids Red Deer is designed as a transition experience. In a few short months, these Grade 5 students will move into middle school, where the world will feel a little bigger. They will navigate new schedules, different teachers, multiple learning spaces, larger peer groups, and a much greater expectation for independence. That transition can be exciting, but it can also be intimidating. Grow Kids gives students a chance to rehearse some of that change in a supported environment, with adults and older students around them who are there for one reason: to help them feel more prepared for what comes next.
That has always been the heart of the event.
It started years ago as Grow Boys Red Deer, a conference intended to support boys as they prepared for the move into middle school. Over time, the event evolved, as meaningful work often does, because the need was never only about one group of students. The need was about kids preparing for change, kids learning to understand themselves and others, kids beginning to ask where they fit, who they are becoming, and what kind of responsibility comes with growing up.
Today, Grow Kids Red Deer includes Grade 5 students regardless of gender, and the event continues to be facilitated entirely by community volunteers and a small but mighty committee. Many of those people have been part of this work from the beginning. That matters to me, because the consistency of the adults behind the event says as much as the event itself. Hope is not built by one person with a good idea. It is built when people keep showing up for something they believe is worth sustaining.
The conference is organized around the four directions of the HOPE Way-finder: respect, understanding, relationships, and responsibility. Each session connects to at least one of those directions, not as a slogan or a poster on the wall, but as something students actually experience throughout the day. They are invited to think about respect through the way they see themselves and others. They practice understanding by learning from different presenters, stories, and perspectives. They build relationships by moving through the day with peers, mentors, volunteers, and students they may not have known before. They explore responsibility by seeing that leadership does not begin with a title or a position; it begins in the choices they make in the spaces they are already in.
That is what I love most about Grow Kids. It does not simply tell students to be respectful, understanding, relational, or responsible. It creates a day where they get to practice those things in real time.
For me, that is where hope becomes more than a word.
We often talk about hope as if it is mainly a feeling, a mindset, or a positive outlook. I understand why. There are times when hope does feel like something we hold onto internally, especially when life feels uncertain. But hope, at its best, has to become more than internal optimism. It has to move. It has to take shape. It has to become something we build into the lives of others.
That is what Grow Kids has done for 16 years. It takes a belief — that young people deserve preparation, belonging, mentorship, challenge, and encouragement — and turns it into a day they can actually experience.
Students may remember the activities. They may remember the high school mentors. They may remember the presenters or the energy of moving through the GH Dawe Community Center (we literally take it over for the day) with a group of kids from different schools throughout the city, but my hope is that, underneath all of that, they also remember the feeling that people showed up for them. People believed this transition mattered. People believed they were worthy.
That matters.
When young people feel that adults have taken the time to prepare them for what comes next, they begin to understand that their future is not something they simply stumble into. It is something they can step toward with support, awareness, and a little more confidence than they may have had before.
That is the kind of hope I believe in.
Not hope as wishful thinking. Not hope as a poster, slogan, or easy answer. Hope as action. Hope as structure. Hope as community. Hope as the decision to create better conditions for people who are still learning how to find their way.
That belief is also part of what has been shaping HOPE Alliance Coaching & Consulting. The work may look different depending on the setting, but the core idea is the same. Whether I am thinking about students preparing for middle school, educators and leaders navigating complex systems, or individuals trying to reclaim a healthier rhythm in their lives, I keep coming back to the same conviction: hope needs to be practiced, structured, and acted upon.
That is also the thinking behind the first HOPE Alliance course, The 7-Day Time Reset: The Rule of Eight™, which can be found at hopealliancecoaching.com.
These weren't built as another productivity course. They were built as a practical reset for people who are trying to move from pressure to pattern, from survival to rhythm, and from reflection into purposeful action. In the same way Grow Kids gives students a supported structure to prepare for what comes next, the Time Reset is designed to help people pause, notice the pattern they are living in, and begin making more intentional choices with the time they already have.
I am humbled and sit with gratitude for the students who showed up with energy and openness. Gratitude for the high school mentors who guided them through the day. Gratitude for the presenters who gave their time and expertise. Gratitude for the committee members and volunteers who have continued to believe that this kind of experience matters.
Sixteen years later, Grow Kids Red Deer is still a reminder to me that hope is not something we wait around for. It is something we design for. It is something we teach through experience. It is something we build together, one intentional action at a time.
HOPE Alliance Coaching & Consulting is now open for individuals, teams, schools, and organizations ready to move from reflection into purposeful action.
The first HOPE Alliance course, The 7-Day Time Reset: The Rule of Eight™ launched today.
Learn more about the work: hopealliancecoaching.com
#hope #hopealliance #leadership #coaching #ruleofeight #worklifebalance #boundaries #personaldevelopment
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