2009 NAD Youth Leadership Camp: Diversity Day!

Vlog by Pixels

At last! We are firefly now! We’re really comfortable with our group because we are working on improving ourselves as well as our team! We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get the name “Firefly” because we have to get the right concept, and apply it to topics of leadership here at YLC. We discussed it for a pretty long time (four days!) and we finally decided on a name, motto, and play.

“To be honest, I really like it because it belongs to us. Firefly is related to one light, everyone follows it and we are that light.” –Bianca Hamilton

“I think firefly is good name for us. We are all on the same team. Go Firefly!” -Richard Bertling

Introducing the members of Firefly: Sergio Carrillo, Bethany Weiner, Valerie Farr, Esther Fass, Jennifer Wrenn, John Hagner, Jordan Ramser, Richard Bertling, Bianca Hamilton, Justine Webb, Kassie Stutler, and Subrina Morales!

We really have a wonderful group!

The topic of the day was diversity! The campers of YLC come from very diverse backgrounds! We were very fortunate to have four very special guest speakers, Ivy Velez, Tim Albert, Laurene Simms, and Diana Cho, all from very diverse backgrounds, to inspire us with their words of wisdom. The workshop began with Ms. Ivy Velez who enlightened us with some of her experiences being a foreigner to America. The second guest speaker, Mr. Tim Albert, who spoke about successful deaf black people in higher positions. People such as Ms. Laurene Simms herself! Laurene was a 1^st grade teacher and is now a professor at Gallaudet University. She was the third guest speaker who explained to us how people really think in situations where they are faced with diversity issues. She mentioned that the biggest problem is not what we say or do, its how we think. It was truly amazing on a psychological level and the campers were truly fortunate to be able to listen to her inspiring words. Last but not least, Diana Cho inspired us with the quote “I am because we are.” She told us about three people who made outstanding changes in their lives through the power of love, peace, and forgiveness.

Afterwards, Blair Rasmus, Greg Beattie, and Lauren Sanchez, three of our wonderful counselors led the campers in a few activities. Greg wrote the words popular, punks, intelligent, LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered), and jocks on big sheets of paper. The campers wrote our thoughts affiliated with each word, and learned a lot about stereotyping and how thoughts related with the labels that are put on people do not always apply to everyone! Lauren shared some personal stories about being labeled as one race when she is another race. Lauren's message is not to judge a person by cover. Blair gave the campers some "thinking outside the box" activities to do, and applied them to our enriching day. She left the campers with an inspiring quote by an unknown author: "Diversity is the one thing we all have in common. Celebrate it every day!"

After dinner, knowing that the evening program would begin anytime soon, we walked outside to await the news of what we would be doing. Usually a YLC staff member would mention the news right away, but they said nothing! Nothing at all! Puzzled, we scrunched our eyebrows together as our minds filled with a lot of thoughts, “What are we doing tonight?” For what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Joshua Weinstock, one of the staff beckoned us to follow him into a path through the trees. While we followed, some campers looked nervous, others raced each other to get there first! Reaching to our unknown destination, not far from Leadership Hall, we found ourselves asking, “what are we doing here?” The answer was obvious as it was it was on a great big board in the middle of the clearing: Camp Bowl! We cheered in excitement, though some of us bit our nails. What IS the Camp Bowl?

Camp Bowl is somewhat similar to Academic Bowl. Four candidates (one from each group) are asked specific questions that they have to answer. If they get the answer wrong, no points were given. If they get it right, they get to roll two dice, whatever number they got they add to their team's points! If only one camper got it right out of all the groups, that group gets double the points! This game was so exciting, and the staff and campers were knocked off their feet!

We asked Ryan Baldinez, a member of Firefly, what he thought of Camp Bowl:

“It was so much fun! At the beginning of the game, we were down by 20 points but we eventually came back up and won 2^ndplace!"

This evening at fireside, it was the fireflies’ turn to create a performance that would WOW the crowd! But wait, we had to make one big nice fire that would keep us warm all night long. At first, the fire started beautifully, but there was one small problem: we put the fuel on the fire way too fast and the big, nice fire turned into a small, unnoticeable fire! Ten minutes left until fireside! Seven minutes left! THREE minutes left! Finally! The fire was beautiful. Next up, the skit! Uh-oh! We spent all of our time trying to get the fire to start that we did not work on our skit! All we had was an idea, one crowd, and one big heart. So we all got up on the stage with excitement oozing out of our pores, and had one mind blowing dance battle to entertain the crowd! Then our fantastic chef, Matt Kruger (YLC '87), got up on stage and explained about his journey to becoming a personal chef. Before he spoke to us, we thought he was “just a chef”. After watching him speak, we realized that he is so much more than that. He has been through so much, has bachelor and master degrees, never gave up, and is now living his dream! So, our advice to you is: live your dream!