Halogen: National Young Leaders Day 2014
On Friday 21st November, Year 11 Prefects were amongst the 2,300 NSW secondary students who gathered for The National Young Leaders Day. And what a day it was!
Upon arrival, we put on those signature Halogen purple wrist bands and explored The Expo- with amazing volunteering, leadership, universities and careers booths to inspire us to extend our leadership skills and put them into practice. Then, with a very warm welcome from the energetic Murray Bunton, we were ready for a day of leadership; with stories to inspire and lessons to be learnt.
The message to be taken from the whole day was “Nothing significant, enduring or amazing ever began that way”. And as speaker upon speaker came forward on stage to share their stories, that very message echoed within them. Mike Martin, Executive Director of the Halogen Foundation, spoke about the equation of turning “Nothing” into “Something”. Leaders, as he says, are people who use their influence to turn nothing into something through having an idea to change that nothing, putting in work, and conquering a little bit of failure to make it into something.
Next, we heard next from the founder of Project RockIt, Lucy Thomas. As she revealed her heart touching story and the way Project RockIt was created, we could see the ways in which she had had an idea to “tackle (cyber)bullying + hate + ignorance by empowering school students to stand up and lead change” and turned it into a reality.
Jeremy Rolleston, also showed us how, throughout his sporting career, despite all the injuries and hardships, he had managed to achieve his goal of being an Olympic medallist in Bobsleigh.
The last speaker of the day, CEO of CPA Australia, Alex Malley, was truly inspiring. The first and only man to ever interview Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, Mr. Malley currently runs ‘The Naked CEO’, an online blog/forum on what he thinks makes a great leader. Speaking to us about the ways to be a great leader included things such as never grading yourself and that getting over fear and embarrassment was the only thing holding us back was truly an eye-opener.
After lunch, a panel of amazing leaders further inspired us with their stories to success.
The ‘10,000 Ideas’ Project was also running on the day which allowed young leaders to share their personal ideas on how they, as leaders, could enact change on a problem they could see in the world. It challenged us to see not only how we could tackle it, but speak up on the ways in which we would take action. The project was an amazing ways for the voices of young leaders to be heard.
The boiling hot day that was; Halogen National Young Leaders Day 2014. We didn’t come home with “nothing” on our minds- our minds were filled with the ways we could influence, we could make “something”, we could be enactors of change.
We would like to thank Dr. Geoff Lee (Member for Parramatta), for sponsoring us to attend this event. We appreciate your support and like to thank you for allowing us to be inspired, driven and motivated as young leaders.
