Session 5 - March 16, 2008

Leadership Institute
Meeting Notes

This week the Leadership Institute spent a great deal of time analyzing our own leadership qualities, and digging a bit deeper to understand what barriers prevent us from always being the leaders and young people we want to be. We started out the session by asking two questions: How can we challenge ourselves to be the type of leaders who bring different communities together? and What are some of the roadblocks that we face as leaders in bringing people together? We talked about the fact that in order to challenge ourselves more, we have to be willing to step outside of our comfort zone and try to understand how others may be feeling. We also talked about the fact that it takes and open mind and heart as well as belief in others in order to bring communities together. We spoke about not rushing to judgment and waiting to hear others' perspectives. In terms of the roadblocks that prevent us from being the type of leaders we'd like, we said that sometimes difference such as race or ethnicity can be a roadblock, but that also rushing to judgment can be one as well. Overall,  the discussion allowed us to deepen our understanding of leadership and enabled us to re-commit to the type of leadership that is important in Confronting Concerns.

After this discussion, we moved into planning the upcoming workshops. We played a game that enabled us to re-acquaint ourselves with workshop structure so that we could prepare to create our own workshops. We then began to prepare for the Living Room Dialogue that we will present to adults and youth in late April. We decided that we would use the Human Barometer format in order to get a wide range of views and allow people to share their opinions at the same time they heard others' opinions.

Overall, this session helped us to move closer to our goal of putting together workshops for other youth. We have outlined some dates for the upcoming Confronting Concerns Workshops and we are looking forward to continue that planning.

back to Confronting Concerns III overview

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Last updated April 1, 2008