Inspiration

Yesterday, we held our kickoff retreat for 26 high school students who will be participating in our Ambassadors of Caring Leadership program. Going into the event, I was nervous about everything going off as planned, I think I slept for about an hour on Saturday nightbefore leaving for Drexel University, our host site, at 7:00am. After a long and exhausting 12+ hours, at 9:30 last night, I could finally take a breath and smile, I could not have asked for a better day!

As the morning started off, I was a little bit concerned as I noticed a clear separation at the breakfast tables between the Main Line (aka mostly white) kids and the city (mostly black) girls. The morning started off with some ice breakers and team building activities, but everyone was still a little hesitant. Obviously, I wasn't having that. For lunch, I formed groups based on what candy bars the kids picked out a of a bag, and forced the Reeses's, Hersheys, Kit Kats, 3 Musketeers and Almond Joys to sit together and mix it up. I gave them the challenge of having to introduce a "new friend" from their table after lunch, and that challenge was met. Within an hour, these kids had really made an effort to get to know one another and were EXCITED about what they had learned.

The rest of the afternoon was amazing. It was a beautiful day, and we spent a long time outside just brainstorming and having an open conversation about the problems in their communities and ideas for projects to deal with these issues.

These kids are inspirational. They have big dreams and big hearts. At the end of the night, we had a candlelight ceremony where we reflected on the day. A few of the kids were moved to tears as they talked about how refreshing it was to meet other people their age who cared about the same things as them.

In Cape Town, Ma Afrika Tikkun ran a parallel retreat...We both videotaped greetings to send to one another...Can't wait to hear how it went on their end.