Pretend City Museum program helps build future leaders
- Share via
Clara Cestone had two graduations this year — from Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita and from Pretend City’s Youth Leadership Board, where she served as president. And now she heads to Stanford University in the fall.
“I definitely lacked a lot of leadership, public speaking and technical skills,” Cestone said about what she learned while leading the group. “I can send an amazing chain of emails now. I didn’t even have the confidence to write my name on a paper and send it to someone before the Youth Board.
“It definitely transformed me from your more introverted personality to an extrovert, which I think is always great.”
Founded in 2009 as part of Pretend City Children’s Museum in Irvine, the Youth Leadership Board — Youth Board, for short — is an advisory and leadership board made up of middle and high school students looking to develop as leaders and contribute to the community, according to Kevin Hoang, volunteer coordinator for Pretend City.
“Through the Youth Board, Pretend City aims to mentor and give a platform and resources to a group of talented and passionate young adults, connecting them to a group of their peers and to our museum resources to empower them to pursue projects and programs to give back to the community while also cultivating and developing their own skills,” he said.
The Youth Board meets regularly in person and members collaborate remotely to brainstorm and coordinate their projects. Students meet at least once a month in person for workshops and meetings.
“It was developed to extend the educational reach and mission of Pretend City,” Hoang said. “Although Pretend City is an organization focused on early childhood education, we saw very early on an opportunity to expand the reach of the museum to be able to mentor and give a platform to talented and passionate young adults.”
Hoang said they actually have current members of the Youth Board who attended Pretend City as small children and then returned as young teenagers as museum volunteers before applying to the Youth Board. Students apply in the spring — about a dozen are selected from a larger pool. There were more than 60 applicants for the 2024-25 session.
“They put on professional and life-skill workshops for each other, entirely peer-led, where they mentor and develop each other with important life skills such as conflict resolution, communication skills, networking, job applications and mental health,” Hoang said. “After each monthly workshop, they then transition into collaboration and work on their various projects, all of which are pitched by board members in formal proposals, which are then reviewed and approved by Pretend City executive leadership before the board begins working on them. These projects are determined purely by the passions and the interests of the board, so they can vary wildly year to year.”
During the most recent Youth Board session, students worked on a voter registration and Get Out the Vote program in the fall to help educate young adults about the importance of American democracy, voting and how to register as a voter.
They also developed educational resources to teach young children about democracies and elections, then sent them to local elementary schools and after-school programs to help local educators during the election season.
“During the spring, in response to the California wildfires, the Youth Board ran fundraisers to raise funds to assemble mental-health baskets and activities for local young children, which they then distributed to local youth centers and programs,” Hoang said.
In previous years, the Youth Board has run events at Pretend City to promote STEM education, arts and music, mental wellness and family communication.
Cestone said that in the second semester of her junior year, she helped organize a coding education event for children in the community as one of her projects.
“I am the president and founder of a coding club at my school. It’s called Coding Networks, and my best friend and I got together and we brought a bunch of volunteers to teach coding to kids in our community,” Cestone said. “We partnered with the Youth Board and the museum and we put up a little activity table and we ran our computers and we taught them Scratch, which is a more elementary programming language, which teaches younger kids.”
Ella Townsend, of Yorba Linda, outgoing vice president of the Youth Board, is attending Harvard University in the fall.
“Working with young people across Orange County has exposed me to a variety of perspectives and leadership styles, but it also developed communication skills across a variety of mediums — both online and in-person — that improved my soft skills,” Townsend said. “My favorite memory at Pretend City was implementing my Girl Scout Gold Award project. Because of my connection to the Youth Board, I had the opportunity over the summer to teach coping mechanisms to preschool students, and eventually, this led to expanding the project to reaching refugees. Ultimately, this was my first introduction to leveraging connections and networks to achieve specific objectives.”
Townsend said being part of the Youth Board allows students to learn all facets of how an organization runs —
including financial planning, developing projects and partnering with other organizations.
“From my experience, I have always loved our fundraising activities,” Townsend said. “The Youth Board ran a Noon Year’s basket event (held midday on New Year’s Eve), which required speaking to local business owners to receive donations, setting revenue goals and pitching to potential raffle ticket customers. I also had the opportunity to converse with museum donors at their annual gala, which was incredibly eye-opening.”
She said these experiences piqued her interest in potentially pursuing a future in entrepreneurship.
Chloe Wong, who attends Arnold O. Beckman High School in Irvine, is incoming president of the Youth Board.
“I was originally a regular museum floor volunteer at Pretend City in middle school, and after volunteering there for about a year, I discovered the Youth Board — a way to expand my impact at the museum I’d loved in my childhood and as a volunteer,” Wong said. “I joined the board when I was in eighth grade in 2022. Throughout my time as a member, I’ve grown as a leader, whether it be by walking around the Irvine Spectrum and asking stores for donations, or by learning to collaborate with various personalities and accommodate everyone’s busy schedules.”
Wong said these experiences pushed her out of her comfort zone and helped with developing communication, teamwork and leadership skills.
“As incoming president, I plan to continue pursuing community outreach projects that make education more accessible to children of all backgrounds,” she said. “One of our goals is to utilize our social media accounts more consistently, even if it’s just to share information on relevant topics, events or resources for families. Additionally, we hope to launch new initiatives, like distributing learning kits that support Pretend City’s mission and engage youth both in and beyond the museum.”
Pretend City is currently in the process of building a new, larger permanent home at the Great Park in Irvine that will increase the space from 28,000 square feet to 72,000 square feet, including 20,000 square feet of outdoor learning space, according to Executive Director Ellen Pais. They break ground in July with plans to open in early 2027.
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
