My Journey into Leadership; Making an Impact as a Teen Leader

My Journey into Leadership; Making an Impact as a Teen Leader

Lobbying on Capital Hill

I believe that leadership takes form in many situations.

A leader is anything from the captain of the high school football team to the first person to speak up in a quiet room. There are leadership qualities within everyone, but it takes the right environment to reveal them. It also takes the right people to provide opportunity for leadership to prevail.

I believe that past experiences don’t necessarily define your future.

I have never found myself to be much of a leader within a school setting. In middle school, I was not close friends with anyone in school because I was too focused into my figure skating, a community that made me more comfortable to be a leader. I remember in 8th grade, I ran for student council and lost. I thought this would be the end to my non-existent career in leadership, because people didn’t believe in me. Towards the end of 8th grade, I decided to stop skating for many reasons, and I was left without a strong community to become a part of. It was difficult for me to regain connections with people from school because everyone had already found their place by then. I couldn’t find the leader within me to open myself up at this point. Luckily, graduation was right around the corner and soon thereafter, I would be heading back to overnight camp. I hadn’t realized until I went back that summer of Freshman year that this could be my community. Even though I only got to see this group of people for 4 weeks out of the year, I felt open and comfortable with myself and the people around me. I decided after that summer to become more involved into my youth group so that I could be a part of a similar community year round.

I believe that helping others will also help myself.

Since I finally felt comfortable with a group of people, I was able to become the leader that I had wanted to be before. Instantly since joining, I had become overwhelmed with leadership opportunities. Everything from group leading and planning programs to traveling and representing my region in a larger setting. I started my journey into leadership with becoming a member of my temple’s senior youth group board sophomore year. I was elected to be the social action vice president due to my involvement in Stand for the Silent, a non-profit anti-bullying organization. As I started to do more planning for my small youtah group of about 20 kids, I discovered my love for teaching about social justice and volunteer work. In January of sophomore year, I traveled to DC with 8 other teens to attend a conference on social justice and advocacy. I was so excited to be able to learn about some of the relevant issues in our government and have the opportunity to lobby to my state senators and district rep. Being able to do something like this made me become passionate about making an impact through social justice.

I believe in the impact social action being a gateway to leadership.

Regional Board of mine and another region being installed

I decided to take my passion further by running for the regional board of a North American youth group rather than my small setting temple one. I ran and won on the platform of creating a chain of impact. By that, I meant that I wanted to make an impact on them or towards an issue, to want to make an impact on another person or issue. Now that I am in a high position of leadership in my regional environment, I am able to provide more leadership opportunities in a social action realm for others to become inspired in the same way. Whenever I plan my social action programs for our events, I always bring myself back to the question of, “Will I make an impact?”.

I believe that making a difference as a teenager isn’t as hard as it seems.

Aside from my work in a religious setting, my work in this class has helped me be able to make an impact. The school spirit project allowed our class to create a sense of community within GBN. The T-Shirt committee gave people an outlet to express their love for our wonderful retiring principal, something that a lot of students were looking for. The spirit day committee helped in creating community by uniting people together through school spirit. Finally, the marketing committee helped out encouraging students to attend more events and follow through with spirit days. This organized leadership structure really helped us succeed in creating the impact of increasing school spirit. It is small projects like these that can have major impact on a community.

This I believe.