2015 Roswell CLeW HOBY Community Leadership Workshop

December 6, 2015 at the Roswell, NM Unity Center

Student Ambassadors arrive at 8:00 AM. Yellow, Green and Orange teams form and members get acquainted with Facilitators and Junior Staff.

Yellow, Green and Orange teams form and members get acquainted.

CLeW Co-Chairs Chabrielle Allen and Cameron Estrada, with Spirit Team Leader McKenna Thellen and the Junior Staff begin the workshop with a few “Icebreakers.”

Dr. Matthew Delgado

HOBY New Mexico Corporate Board President Dr. Matthew Delgado welcomes all of the ambassadors to the Roswell Community Leadership Seminar (HOBY CLeW) and introduces the staff, the CLeW itinerary, group activities and team building exercises. He introduced ambassadors to the HOBY Story and the “Social Change Model of Leadership Development”—emphasizing that leadership can be learned and is not an inherent trait when you’re born.

Dr. Delgado is Roswell native, graduate of Roswell High School and a HOBY Alum. He attended NMSU where he earned a doctorate in Pharmacology. He recently relocated from Las Cruces to Albuquerque when he was promoted to District Manager of Walgreen’s, where he has been working for the past eight years.

Nathan Padilla, MSW/LADAC

Substance abuse counselor Nathan Padilla and co-owner of Embrace Inc—a community center for youth in Roswell—speaks about his past life as a homeless person and a drug addict. He was able to finally turn his life around sixteen years ago, after his son was born. He put himself through college and went on to earn Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology from ENMU, where also helped form the first Latino fraternity. After credentialing as a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselor (LADAC) he continued working to earn his Master’s in Social Work (MSW) and returned to Roswell, dedicating his life to helping addicts rebuild their lives, and to a community needing social services to lift people up from desperation, addiction, neglect, and abuse.

Jackie DeLara

Community Services manager Jackie DeLara from ENLACE shares her story about building support for social services in the Roswell community for schools, students and their families. Against unfavorable odds, Jackie created an annual Health Fair in the schools that have been the most attended of any public function in the school system, and this program has become a highly anticipated event each year. Jackie recently helped dozens of high school students find formal attire so that they could attend Winter Ball with their classmates—which she noted was part of her job description—but normally helps families in need to stay clothed, fed, sheltered and connected to opportunities and services to begin again after hardship.

Detective Albert Padilla

Chaves County Sheriff’s Office detective Albert Padilla began his charitable organization “Santa Cops” a few years ago—and patterned it after a similar project that he participated in while serving as a police officer in Roosevelt County years ago. He saw a need in the community to serve underprivileged kids at Christmastime and also a need to restore faith and trust in the County’s police force. He and fellow officers gather toys at donation stations at local grocery stores on their own time, and then deliver the toys and stuffed animals to dozens of homes around Roswell on Christmas Eve. He arranged for our CLeW ambassadors to help tag a few hundred stuffed animals as our Leadership for Service (L4S) service project.

Stuffed animals and toys are delivered each Christmas Eve to deserving children in Roswell by the Chaves County Sheriff’s “Santa Cops” program

Ambassadors

Our ninth-grade student Ambassadors represented Roswell, Goddard, and Dexter High Schools, and also the Early College Charter School and the New Mexico Military Institute (NMMI).

Tasha Sing & Emma

Tasha Sing is a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) and has the unique and distinct role of Courthouse dog handler for her companion Emma, a Golden Retriever and a specially trained and highly skilled service dog. Emma and Tasha help sooth and calm children and teens, and victims of domestic violence acclimate to the courthouse when called to give witness testimony as part of judicial process or hearing. New Mexico is leading the nation in the application of service animals in Courthouses, and Tasha was one of the first to be selected to train for this program.

State Senator Tim Jennings

Senator Tim Jennings was elected to his first public office as County Commissioner at the age of 24, and then continued serving in the New Mexico State Legislature for over 36 years. He is a lifelong Democrat but served a largely Republican district during his entire tenure. During that time he was selected by his party to serve as Senate Majority Whip and Minority Whip. As an elected representative and storied public servant, Jennings says it’s invaluable for students today to read and become familiar with the United States Constitution and the New Mexico State Constitution—even advocating that everyone keep copies handy for reference in times of need or simply for study during personal downtime.

Leadership for Service Project

Our student Ambassadors helped Detective Albert Padilla to sort, tag, and organize several dozen stuffed animals that had been donated to his “Santa Cops” organization, to be given to to deserving children in need on Christmas Eve.

Group Leadership Activity

This game is intended for Ambassadors to learn leadership and communication in a group dynamic. Ambassadors start by standing on an unfolded tarp. The objective is to turn the tarp over using nothing but their feet, and no one in the group is allowed to step off of the tarp. Working together, but not necessarily as effectively as they could have, the group was able to achieve the desired result in about sixteen minutes. They then returned to their teams to discuss how they could have worked better together.

Prejudices About Prejudice

During the morning session, teams were given a list of hypothetical heart transplant patients and an assignment to decide who should get the transplant. At lunchtime HOBY New Mexico Leadership Seminar Chair Vincent Thome introduced a video about prejudice by Prince Ea who challenges the concept of prejudice as nothing more than labels that limit our own thinking and possibilities.

After sharing the video, Vincent asked the ambassadors to consider what labels limit them from seeing opportunities they might have otherwise considered and pursued. Referencing the morning’s three CLeW speakers and their personal stories as examples, each demonstrated how they had to overcome prejudices in order to achieve their goals and objectives and to become successful.

A discussion about prejudices, and the completion of the Heart Transplant activity.

The teams returned to their heart transplant list to discover for themselves how their own prejudices may have influenced their decisions, and then to explore whether they would change their mind.

Dr. Delgado leads a discussion about what the ambassadors learned, and invites them to hear methods and strategies on how the group could have worked better to achieve the desired results in less time on the tarp flipping activity.

Take 2

The group is given a second chance to see if their methods and strategies for improved communication and teamwork will make the task of flipping the tarp go any quicker.

Second time’s a charm!

The group gets the job done in in less than fourteen minutes—shaving more than two minutes off of their first attempt. The difference in shared responsibility and greater enthusiasm was extraordinary.

HOBY Ambassadors become HOBY Alumni

HOBY CLeW Certificates

HOBY Junior Staff Celebrate a Mission Accomplished!

Adult Volunteers and Facilitators recognize a job well done.

HOBY HUGS

“I’m 43. Only this year did I have this… ‘epiphany…’ this memory, that as a six-year-old my dad told me that I needed to ‘straighten up and fly right.’ And in that moment I decided that what that meant was that I couldn’t do anything right. That I was worthless. That’s the prejudice I’ve had with myself; buried so deep that I never questioned it. A label that I gave myself and it stuck. It has limited me all of these years but it wasn’t the truth. Maybe you have a memory like this, but it isn’t true.”

You are the only one holding you back. you can be anything, do anything, and have anything that you want in life. you control your future and your destiny. Not your teachers, your parents or your friends and family. Not your race, geography, or economics. let go of prejudiceS: I Can’t… I won’t… and I Shouldn’t…’ Let go of ideas and labels that are keeping you from being the outstanding person AND LEADER tHAT you were born to be. you are all beautiful and I love each of you. NOW Go Lead!”

— Vincent Thomé (HOBY Pappa)

Leadeship Seminar Chair, HOBY New Mexico

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Created By
Vincent Thome
Appreciate
Vincent Thome, Cohen-Michael Rush

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