STATE LEADERSHIP SEMINAR
When students arrive on Friday morning, we ask them to embrace an open mind and release any prior expectations. We’re just going to break expectations anyways. By the time they leave on Sunday, they will have been pushed outside their comfort zone and motivated to enact real change in their community.
In just one weekend, our volunteers transform these young adults from students into ambassadors who have confidence in their ability to make a difference in the world. Each ambassador is provided the opportunity to engage in unique leadership training, service-learning, and motivation-building experiences.
Students will participate in leadership activities, hear from distinguished leaders across the state of Delaware, engage in community service activities, and collaborate with their peers to tackle the problems they believe are prevalent in their communities. The experience will provide students with the chance to learn more about themselves and grow their leadership skills, but also to network with over 70 other high school students across the state.
HOBY uses the Social Change Model of Leadership as a lens with which to understand community engagement and change. Through our activities, students will embrace our core values of volunteerism, integrity, excellence, diversity, and community partnership.
The HOBY Curriculum
The first phase of our curriculum works to foster and develop individual leadership qualities in those who participate; to consider the personal qualities that are most supportive of group functioning and positive social change.
At the end of the seminar, students will be able to:
- be aware of the beliefs, values, attitudes, and emotions that motivate them to take action;
- think, feel, and behave with consistency, genuineness, authenticity, and honesty; and
- commit using passion, intensity, and duration to serve and drive collective action.
In our second phase of the program, our goal is to design a collaborative leadership development process not only to facilitate the development of the desired, individual qualities (above), but also to affect positive social change.
At the end of the seminar, students will be able to:
- work with others in a common effort, empowering themselves and others through common trust;
- work with shared aims and values, encouraging engagement in collective analysis of the situation at hand and tasks to be undertaken; and
- recognize two fundamental reality of creative groups: that differences in viewpoint are inevitable, and such differences must be aired openly with civility.
In the third phase of our curriculum, we aim to direct leadership development activities towards a social end; to consider kinds of service activities that are the most effective in energizing the group and in developing desired personal qualities in the individual; to emphasize the responsibility of leaders to contribute to positive change.
Service oriented leadership recognizes that all of us have an important duty to serve others in our communities and to make the world a better place, this is putting the idea of “think global, act local” into action.
At the end of the seminar, students will be able to:
- individually and as a collaborative group become responsibly connected to their community and society through their leadership experience.
Leadership is working with others to create positive change for the betterment of the group, community, and society. Leadership is a process, and leadership is collaborative. Leadership requires a lot of support and contribution from other people. We need to make sure we show those people appreciation during and after the leadership process!
At the end of the seminar, students will be able to:
- confidently implement gratitude into their leadership activities throughout the process, embracing their humility and recognizing others’ effort towards promoting change.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Goal setting is a major component of any leadership development program, and ours is no different. At HOBY, we use the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals to help orient our objectives. See more information about the Sustainable Development Goals below!
For more information on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, watch this in-depth dive into each goal!