Hope for the Future

This week, I've been working as an assistant with the Emerging Public Leaders program with the Riley Institute at Furman University.  Basically, the Emerging Public Leaders program is an initiative that introduces rising high school seniors who exhibit leadership potential to leaders in the community, in the state, and former national leaders such as former SC Governor and Secretary of Education Richard Riley.  The students spend a week at Furman, meeting with professors, the mayor, and other community figures; they spend a day in Columbia meeting with state political leadership officials.  At the end of the program, each student comes up with a project that will improve their community in some way.  Programs in the past have included a tree-planting program for the areas of the South ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and a program that provided sleeping bags to the homeless in Columbia.  The students will receive funds to jumpstart their projects and, in one year's time, the students' projects will be judged and the winner will receive funds to continue the program.  It truly is a fantastic program, and it has really impacted the lives of students, schools, and communities across the state and the country.

Kids these days are scapegoated for so much that goes on, with or (more often) without their input.  Crime and drugs are two things most readily associated with teenagers, along with many other not-so-positive attributes.  However, the group of teenagers I am working with this week should give everyone hope for the positive outlook for the future.  The 2011-12 group is a positive, nice, upbeat, and confident group of teenagers.  They all come from the state of South Carolina, they are all rising seniors in high school, and all of them have exhibited leadership potential as seen by their teachers, counselors, principals, and other authority figures.  What has really struck me about this group is simply how nice and inviting they all are.  Teenagers often get painted as 'hormonal,' 'moody,' 'standoffish,' or any other number of traits that unfairly reflect on both the person and the chemical changes they are going through in their transition from adolescence to adulthood.  This group has accepted one another, respected the individuality and differing personalities of each and every one, and they are really growing as a team.  This is understandably an exceptional group of young men and women, but they way they have grasped the mantle of leadership and ran with it in only their first few days of the program is both thrilling and inspiring.  I hope they are able to take their passion and energy from this week and transfer it to their community service and leadership projects in their hometowns and in their schools.