What Happened: From September 2022 until January 2024, Mountaintop managed two separate informal Advisory Councils to offer insights to Mountaintop's program design, financial model, and fundraising strategy. One Advisory Council was the "regular" Council and one was the "Youth" Council. While no one contacted Mountaintop to express concern about this arrangement, internally Mountaintop has pointed out that this division of Councils serves no useful function and unnecessarily tokenizes the value of youth input.

 

How Mountaintop Responded: Mountaintop has combined these two Councils into a single Council and does not plan to create a separate Youth Council again in the future. Mountaintop plans to continue to engage former members of the Youth Council (and now members of the current Council) with the same respect and deference as it does with other members of the regular Council.

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Mountaintop's Learning and Commitment: Mountaintop has learned that youth should be treated just as all others, with respect, deference, and collegiality. Youth have deeply valuable insights, and often more valuable insights, as it relates to building an organization focused on the development of emerging leaders. Mountaintop commits to avoid further patronizing youth in the future.