Teen Symposium Inspires Leadership

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Over 400 ninth grade students and adult chaperones from 20 different
local high school groups attended Teen Symposium 2015.

Contributor: Kaylyn Herron, United Way Fox Cities Youth Board Co-Leader

Teen Symposium is a one-day youth leadership conference hosted by United Way Fox Cities and the YMCA of the Fox Cities. The conference features multiple guest speakers, a volunteer resource fair and various leadership activities. We are proud to help aspiring leaders in our community grow through this event. Below, you will hear from Kaylyn Herron, a United Way Fox Cities Youth Board Co-Leader from Hortonville High School, who helped to organize and lead Teen Symposium 2015 on February 3rd.

At Teen Symposium, United Way Fox Cities and the YMCA invite freshmen from schools all over the Fox Cities to learn how to be themselves and to inspire leadership. I went as a freshmen and, at first, only went because I got out of school for the day. I had no idea what was going to happen and was just looking forward to not being at school.

I was one of the shy freshmen that didn't talk much in our discussion groups with students from all different schools. Before Teen Symposium I thought I was only going to do my mandatory

36-hours of community service that I needed to graduate from high school. Now, I can't even keep track of how many hours I have from all my different activities in school. I joined the United Way Youth Board and am now one of the six co-leaders. I look forward to Teen Symposium every year. I love to see how the freshmen take the information that we give them and use it in their lives.

I can only hope that it inspires them like it inspired me. We changed a lot of things this year for the 15th annual Teen Symposium. We changed our speakers a little and had Jake White, founder of Party.0, talk about his journey to becoming a leader who chose to throw non-alcoholic parties on college campuses. He also brought along an amazing DJ and we even had a little mock Party.0!

This year, we had record numbers in the amount of schools, freshmen, and community resources. Teen Symposium builds leadership for the freshmen and hopefully they will take the information from the conference to help make their school and community better.

View photos of Teen Symposium 2015.