Leading: Through Thick and Through Thin

The Youth and Community

The community that I'm associated with the most would be my youth group. We are small (only about 15-20 members) but we are vital in the congregation that we have. Each member comes from a different background and even different stages of their lives. We all have a common goal found in our faith but found respect and openness helps us all to get along. As a youth group, we always empower others to take a leadership role in different community organizations that we want to get involved with. We physically get involved in the community through numerous events and try to reach out by ways of actions (i.e. showing kindness and love to our neighbors and community). We always have meetings to decide on where to go, times and other logistics. During the meetings, we share feedback freely and really try to talk different issues out first. Overall, handle situations by thinking back to the youth group as a whole first and then think of what could really benefit the community. The best example of how we've introduced and implemented change would be just in the past year. Our church moved into a new building with more rooms in it than before. The youth introduced the idea to take over some of the rooms to the congregation and different changes resulting from this taking a stand.

A Better Outlook in Life
In describing my own sense of hope, optimism, and ability to build and strengthen others, I would say that first and foremost, I tend to see the good out of all situations. Throughout my life so far, I've found myself on both the "woe is me" side and the "what happens, happens" side. I quickly figured out that when your hope is lost and you feel your glass is empty, it really doesn't help any cause. It may even hurt it. When I say I have hope, I really mean it. My hope consists of never, ever giving up completely. There are always options in my opinion. I also feel like I'm very optomistic about events. In any case, good or bad, I try to put out the bigger picture and visualize it. That's how I stay optomistic the best. I can nurture hope and optimism by first showing it myself. If the leader is upbeat, the followers will be upbeat too. I can also try to have everyone take a step back and think about the positives first before rushing to conclusions. Optomism is always important in leadership because a team that never gives up won't back down either.

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by

people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."

                                                                      Dale Carnegie