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.