Northwest Catholic Junior Attends Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Seminar

Elizabeth Vandal of Enfield, a rising junior at Northwest Catholic High School in West Hartford, attended the Hugh O’Brian World Leadership Congress at Loyola University Chicago this past July. HOBY Leadership Programs invite students to discover their leadership potential while becoming responsible and responsive global citizens.

Each spring select area sophomores from public and private high schools are invited to attend one of their state’s HOBY Leadership Seminars. These students are recognized for their leadership skills and attend their local seminar to apply their gifts to become more effective and ethical leaders. Student participants known as HOBY Ambassadors take part in hands-on activities, meet leaders in their state, and explore their leadership skills while learning how to lead others and make a positive impact in their communities.

Prior to her trip to Chicago Vandal joined more than 170 high school student leaders from New England at the HOBY Leadership Seminar held at the University of Bridgeport. Inspired by her time at the Bridgeport seminar, Vandal applied to the World Leadership Conference and fundraised the full tuition in order to attend the seminar in Chicago, where she learned about personal and group leadership along with global citizenship through speakers, workshops, and service projects, including packaging 51,000 meals for children in Chicago as well as cleaning up a local park.

At the end of HOBY seminars, HOBY Ambassadors are challenged to give back by serving at least 100 volunteer hours in their communities. Students who complete the Leadership for Service (L4S) Challenge within 12 months of their seminar are eligible for the HOBY L4S Challenge Award and the President’s Volunteer Service Award. Alumni who log 4,000 hours of service receive the President’s Call to Service Award from HOBY. To date HOBY Ambassadors have performed over 3 million hours of volunteer service in their communities.

Following a motivational meeting with Dr. Albert Schweitzer during a trip to Africa in 1958, actor Hugh O’Brian was inspired to establish Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership. “One of the things Dr. Schweitzer said to me was that the most important thing in education was to teach young people to think for themselves,” O’Brian said. “From that inspiration, and with the support of others who believe in youth and the American dream, I started HOBY to seek out, recognize, and develop outstanding leadership potential among our nation’s youth.”

For 58 years Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership has helped cultivate leaders by inspiring a global community of volunteers to lead, serve, and innovate. HOBY programs annually provide more than 10,000 local and international high school students the opportunity to participate in unique leadership training, service learning, and motivation-building experiences. HOBY also provides adults the opportunity to make a significant impact on the lives of youth by volunteering. Today more than 4,000 volunteers annually and over 425,000 alumni proudly make up the HOBY family.

For further information on HOBY, visit hoby.org, like Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership on Facebook at facebook.com/HOBY, and follow on Twitter via @HOBY.