Appreciating Diversity

At The First Tee, we believe that appreciating diversity is of the utmost importance. It is at the heart of what we seek to instill in our participants. Being able to appreciate and understand diversity can certainly help within the context of golf. In the very first level of the program, we teach participants how to introduce themselves and shake hands. We want them to go out and meet as many people as they can so that they can understand and appreciate the differences between themselves. On the course we create drills where kids have the chance to talk through their decision-making process when approaching a shot with their partner (caddy). These caddy drills are excellent because they allow our participants to get to know one another and understand the other ones thought process. With older participants, we start seeing a lot of diversity of thought. This evolves even further as we approach the Eagle level of our program as we talk about building a Go-to Team. When we build a network of people close to us who we can go to with problems (both in life and on the course) it is helpful to have people with strengths in different areas. We highly encourage our participants to develop their Go-to Teams with diversity as a key component. We want our participants to take the lessons learned in The First Tee to their schools and communities. Youth from all backgrounds represent 100% of our future. If we can help make diversity and inclusion a priority for kids, we will help drive innovation, growth, and broader social change in the future.