The Holland area Rotary Club's middle school leadership program, Leaders for the 21st Century, was established in 2000. Bob Armour has headed the program the entire time. Graduates of the program who are in high school or college have served as counselors. The program was paused for 3 years due to the pandemic. Last year we were able to offer a 2-day conference for a reduced number of students. This year the conference will return to a 3-day conference with a target of 60 students attending.

 

Joseph Torres, who is now a Junior at Holland High School, is a Leaders graduate and will be a counselor for this year's conference. He talked about being a shy middle schooler who learned to use his voice by involvement in the program. He learned that he could speak publicly and lead other students. While he was a counselor last year he watched students who didn't want to leave their parents on the first day become confident leaders.

 

David Beattie has been creating a website for marketing the program and registering participants. One of the difficulties was the dependency on school personnel to collect information for the conference. There are now cards for the school to hand out to selected students giving information to their parents about the program and a QR code that will take them to the website. The parents/students can fill out the registration online and it will be available to the conference organizers. The conference is being held June 12-14 this year.