June 29, 2011
Today was an interesting day! The youth had a special Empowerment breakfast so they left around 7:30am for the Hilton hotel, which is about a 15-minute walk from our hotel. The chaperones were to meet the youth there at 9:30am. Kim walked over with Jill from Oregon and A’Lisa from North Carolina. When we arrived there were protests happening about 75 yards from the hotel. We could see and hear them. There were a ton of police and SWAT around. The police and SWAT all carry automatic weapons and gas masks. When we went into the hotel, we saw Ron and Joanne, our leaders who told us we would be staying in the Hilton all day because of the protests. We all felt safe and continue to feel safe. When we got to the youth, Jordan was all excited because Dikembe Djumbo was there. He wanted to get a picture and his autograph. This was the breakfast that Jordan’s video with Apollo Ohno played as well so Jordan was a pretty happy dude.
After the Hilton quickly switched over the room, (Thank you to the Hilton for being so incredibly accommodating!) we started our sessions. Our first session was about the “Red Laces Campaign” which started as a way to unify supporters of Special Olympics and to raise money for sports equipment for SO teams. We all got a pair of red laces and had to come up with ideas on how to market them in our community. After we wrote our ideas down, we had to string them through our laces with a country flag and tie together with others to make a huge lace idea chain. It was a pretty cool activity and the red laces campaign is a great idea. We can’t wait to put my laces in our shoes! By the way, Tim Shriver wears his laces in ALL his shoes including his dress shoes!
We had an amazing lunch, thanks to Joanne one of our fearless leaders who ordered it for us.
Our next session was presented by our Illinois youth!! They were fantastic! They presented on how to present to an SO board or community board. They did a great job of tag teaming and used a power point to give an example of what you should present at a board meeting. Kim is incredibly proud of them and feels so lucky to have such powerful youth with her!! Once Alli and Jordan were finished, two current SOI board members came and talked about how youth can bridge the gap between the board and the youth. It was a great session overall and very inspiring.
Our next session was presented by Jennifer Carriero from TakingITGlobal, which is a great organization! Google it….it’s worth it. She spoke about different types of leadership and how everyone no matter what type of leadership can get involved! It was a great session and we can’t wait to use some of her stuff when we get back! We had to leave this session early and go back to our hotel because we had to help host a webinar. It was great because Kim’s fantastic Grandma, was able to join our webinar with her AWESOME summer school class!! It was an amazing exchange and we think they enjoyed it is well! Thanks Grandma for getting involved!!
After the webinar, we went out to a great dinner with NC, Colorado, Germany and Montana at a great restaurant called Cross. It had Greek and Italian food! We all enjoyed it. Right next store, there was an amazing patisserie that had homemade gelato so we all got some. Kim got snickers and Alli and Jordan got caramel. It was awesome! The rest of the night was ours because we couldn’t go anywhere else. So they had a dance in the basement of the hotel for those that wanted to stay up. Alli, the party animal, went to the dance and Jordan and Kim turned in for an early night. We all finally got more than 5 hours of sleep last night!! It was great!
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