HERO: Zoe Huml
EXPERT: Dr. Jamie Wu

Zoe is a young adult who founded the HIP Hero Club, an initiative to help high school students take social risks and become the kinds of heroes who speak up when they see things that are wrong. Jamie then discusses what it takes for youth to develop as prosocial leaders like Zoe. She highlights how adults can work with youth to decide the direction of programs, the kind of supports they need to offer and how adults sometimes need to step aside to allow youth not just to have the potential to lead but to be out front.  


Zoe Huml: Founder of the HIP Hero Club
1:46 What is the Heroic Imagination Project and the HIP Hero Club that she founded.
2:40 How ordinary people can allow bad things to happen.
3:30 How ordinary people can also become heroes.
4:20 How youth underestimate their power to do things in the world.
5:18 Her involvement in clubs and using the club format to develop the Club-In-A-Box. 
6:30 Zoes’s early interest in psychology supported by her father and her athletic involvement.
8:15 What happens in the HIP Hero Club: Fortify, inspire, actin heroically.
9:20 The importance of visualization in preparing heroes.
10:15 Helping students to recognize their goals and passions and empowering them to contribute to social change.
12:25 Her personal experience of learning that she can do something that contributes to change in the world.
13:30 A hero is someone who acts for others when there is risk. Risk can be physical. but it is often social, the risk of speaking out.
15:00 Get in touch at www.HIPheroclub.org 
Jamie Wu, PhD: Associate Director for Community Evaluation Programs, University Outreach & Engagement, Michigan State University  
17:00 The need for both a combination of adult involvement along with the young person’s intrinsic motivation, what they care about. 
19:00 Social-media can empower youth but it can go both ways.
20:40 Youth need a mentor that they naturally relate to develop their leadership capabilities.  
22:10 How programs can tap the intrinsic motivation of youth. Giving youth opportunities for leadership, giving them real decision-making roles in deciding the direction.
25:00 What it means to fail safely for youth includes paying attention to how they have improved, what they have learned, and appreciation of their effort.
28:00 Leaders are not just the charismatic and most experienced people. Youth lean toward the idea of leadership as a learned skill. 
29:40 Egalitarian spaces can include a no adult talk time to allow youth voices to emerge.
31:00 Youth agency needs to come from a broad set of skills that they can develop. Taking leadership roles is a way that the skills can develop. Adult support is very important to that development.
33:40 Youth have well-developed social media skills but may need adult scaffolding to move that toward prosocial initiatives.
35:00 Youth-adult partnerships start with asking youth what programs they need and what they care about contributing. 
38:40 The freshness of youth voices and how youth can help one another.
Zoe Huml: Founder of the HIP Hero Club,
Jamie Wu, PhD: Assistant Research Professor, Department of Human Development and Family,
Associate Director for Community Evaluation Programs, University Outreach & Engagement, Michigan State University  
https://engage.msu.edu/about/departments/office-for-public-engagement-and-scholarship