(FTSV at 2025 Innovators Forum Published 12/3/25) This past October, two First Tee – Silicon Valley participants flew to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, to participate in the annual Innovators Forum. The Innovators Forum is part of First Tee’s national opportunities schedule where students from around the country apply to participate in leadership and development events to further their education and experience gained through First Tee. The Innovators Forum equips and empowers teens to develop a meaningful service project in their communities based on education, health, human rights, or environmental sustainability. Selected participants had the chance to learn from industry leaders through interactive workshops and group sessions with their peers.
This year, First Tee – Silicon Valley was proud to be represented by Nicolas Hernandez-Lopez and Sahara Huchim Velazquez.
Both participants have been in our program for more than 5 years and are also junior volunteer coaches. They had an awesome time and relished the chance to meet and get to know fellow First Tee golfers from around the country and learn valuable lessons in time management, networking, and project coordination.
Besides the excellent learning and collaboration opportunities, participants had fun too.
“My highlight was taking a ride on the water taxi to attend a charity golf tournament and seeing a dolphin in the water!”, said Sahara. “While we were on the water taxi we learned that the service started as a non-profit supporting river keepers on the St. John’s River and spreading awareness about their cause.”
Even during their down time, participants were still provided opportunities to see how a service project can be implemented in creative ways.
Nico and Sahara both have excellent ideas of how they can start a project to make a difference in their communities. Nico wants to start a community resource fair in East Palo Alto and has been working with the city’s Vice Mayor to make it happen. “I want this to be bigger than me so hopefully I can pass it off when I leave for college and keep it going forever.” Sahara wants to help bring more Latina’s into FTSV by hosting open house community events and leveraging the power of our Junior Council to create events and fundraising ideas to help spread awareness about our program.
“One thing I learned [from Innovators Forum] was that while FTSV may cover much of the cost of entry to our golf programs for those in need, that doesn’t help solve other problems such as transportation. Families may not choose to participant in golf simply because they can’t get to the golf course at the right time.”
Sahara plans to help address possible solutions to these kinds of logistical issues.
We’re so proud of everything these participants have accomplished, and staff here at FTSV only have this advice to give: keep going!
Nico and Sahara both deserved these opportunities, and we’ll look on with excitement and anticipation to see how their service projects come to fruition.
The 2026 First Tee National Opportunities schedule will be released soon – if your teen is interested in applying, stay tuned! Click here for more information on the National Opportunity process.
