June 2007

The Scholars spent a weekend learning leadership skills with activities that forced them to work together to accomplish their goals. Our new scholars, Jamal and Jerome, each wrote about their experience at the leadership camp. Jamal is a 10th grader at Roger Bacon and Jerome is a 9th grader at St. Xavier. Welcome Jamal and Jerome!!!

Jamal

I had a wonderful experience at the leadership training. We participated in several group activities, which helped value concepts and skills such as teamwork, patience, and respect. It also helped the houses bond together. I personally felt closer to the other fellow counselors and my fellow scholars in the program because I learned to value the roles that everyone plays in my life. But most importantly, everyone had fun! There wasn’t a single person who left without a smile on their face. I believe that was one of the primary goals of the day.

My favorite group activity to participate in was the head-over-heels challenge. Our objective was to flip one of our peers head over heels while they were holding a glass of water. The catch was that our flipper (person being flipped) couldn’t spill one drop, or we all failed the challenge. So everyone huddled up into a group and hypothesized several ideas. Instead of sticking to just one idea, we took good ideas from different plans and put them into action. Unfortunately, there was more failure than success, but the joy experienced during our attempts made it all worthwhile.

Another thing that really enjoyed was R.E.S.P.E.C.T. This was an acronym that we learned in our first activity. The one letter that intrigued me was one of the E’s, which stood for Environment. John (our facilitator) explained to us that everything around us is part of our environment; the air that we breathe, the trees, the animals, and even the people. He also explained that everything we do affects our environment, from the littlest things like littering, to the biggest things like cutting down trees. And a thing such as hurting someone’s feelings that is around you affects your environment. I never looked at the environment that way, so I was kind of appalled at the idea. But that has changed my whole perception on my environment and from that I have learned to respect it.

Jerome

When I first arrived at the spiritual session, I thought we would be meeting at a house in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t expect the place to be so different than what I thought. It was very peaceful and beautiful there. There was a wonderful guesthouse there. I saw horses there. There were a couple of stables. It was really easy to get in touch with nature. There were some birds that I have never seen before. It was a lot easier to breathe. There was a wonderful church in the woods that was kept nice. When going inside, I found that it was a lot quieter outside. This place helped me to forget about my troubles. I could now focus on my spiritual growth.

We participated in many activities. One activity was where we played with life values. There was a long red rope and white flash cards with values written on them with sharpies. Our facilitator, Adam, told us to go ahead and put the values in order from least to greatest to what we thought was most important. One would be the greatest and ten would be the least. Everybody started to put the values that they preferred on top and moving others they didn’t prefer on the bottom. I thought, "Why should we rate the values of life? They are all important." It came to Shahid and my turn; we took all of the values, and stacked them up on top of each other on the top of the rope. Everyone was confused for a while, and then the people behind us just continued to place their favorite ones on top and least favorite on the bottom not noticing what we had done. The facilitator, however, noticed and came up to us. He stared us right in the eye and shook our hands. Then, he walked away. I felt really good about what my partner and I did. It was still sort of frustrating about how no one really thought about what we did until we got to explain it after the activity was over. The last activity was the one I felt the most accomplished in. Everyone had to work together to take a bucket filled with water, put it in a specified area, and have a marble fall into it from a couple yards away using only five or four tubes. The ones holding the bucket filled with water were blindfolded. Also, each one of them could only hold one string to be able to carry the bucket. We somehow accomplished this extraordinary activity. When we finished, I felt so relieved and happy. I thought it was going to be so hard but when we worked together, it turned out to be easy and fun.

Great News

Congratulations to Daryl and Brandon D! Both of these young men have submitted poetry that is being published!

A special thanks to Melissa, BHGH Community Resource Coordinator, who helped Brandon L. and Sam recieve a scholarship to attend the Anthony Munoz Football Camp this summer.