Life In Cowtown: O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G

Hello! I hope everyone is doing good. Weekend before last was HOBY!!! HOBY is the Hugh O'Brian Youth Seminar; it's a national organization w/ sites across the country that bring together high school sophomores for 3-4 days of leadership activities. I wish I had had the opportunity to participate in HOBY when I as a sophomore. The way it works is high schools counselors/teachers across North Texas schools nominate students, usually a guy and a girl, from the their school to attend the seminar, held on the Texas Christian University campus in Fort Worth.

My old AmeriCorps boss, Lisa, whom i did the Urban Dare with (see previous post), has served on the leadership committee for planning the seminar the past several years ago. 3 years ago she asked me, along w/ some other AmeriCorps members, to volunteer for the weekend as senior facilitators, where we got to lead a group of about 10 students through the weekend of leadership workshops, Q&A panels w/ professional members of the community, and a LOT of fun! I loved the experience and was looking forward to being involved in future seminars.

Despite a lot of trying, it never worked out for me to volunteer in Arkansas. But as soon as I got back to Texas I was recruited to help out again w/ this year's seminar! I helped w/ communicating w/ schools around North Texas. I also tried to help plan service projects for the seminar. We had a lot of challenge w/ the swine flu taking over the country, and everything in Fort Worth shut down. Several service partners were just not interested in hosting nearly 200 students for service with schools and businesses shutting down! Luckily we powered through and service was planned.

I wasn't able to get off work to be a facilitator again, so I joined the seminar about halfway through. I was asked to serve as a WLC (World Leadership Congress) judge. At each seminar, a guy and girl are chosen to attend the WLC, a conference in each summer in Washington DC that brings together the chosen students from each site for the "ultimate" seminar. Each student wrote an essay on different topics, I got to read over the essays to help determine student finalists. I also got to interview the finalists to determine the winner. It was a good experience, i was glad I got to help w/ WLC. I spent the rest of the weekend having fun and helping where I could. I'm looking forward to next year's seminar and volunteering again!

Here are a few pictures from HOBY:

Me & Ebony. She was one of my students 3 years ago and she has come back every year as a leader now!