An excerpt from Encounter magazine: October 2024

At Scone Grammar School, students are given a range of leadership and wellbeing opportunities through local charity Where There’s A Will.

We – Sienna Johnson, Ben Officer, Hallie Croucher and Lachlan Hails – have all been on our leadership journeys from as early as Year 8.

Now, in Year 11, we are members of the Upper Hunter Youth Leadership team and have had several experiences that have enabled us to develop our skills and, ultimately, flourish and give back to our schools and the wider community.

Burn Bright

Students of the Upper Hunter are offered an opportunity to begin their leadership journey as early as Year 5 and then again from Year 8 through Where There’s A Will’s funded Burn Bright Leadership and Wellbeing programs.

For us, it was the true beginning of our leadership journeys. These events bring a range of schools together to allow for new connections and relationships to be built, through both local schools and the local community.

We learn about the characteristics of a positive leader and how to identify and build these skills.

The events follow a simple yet engaging program, allowing students to build the basis of our leadership skills and understanding.

National Student Leadership Summit

In Year 11, Where There’s A Will invites schools of the Upper Hunter to nominate a small number of students to form a Youth Leadership team.

We were fortunate enough to be selected from Scone Grammar School in 2024 after participating in a nomination process.

This required us to propose our desires as leaders and a future initiative we would like to implement within our school.

This Youth Leadership team travelled to Adelaide to attend the National Youth Leadership Summit, which was a once in a lifetime opportunity for members of our community.

It was at this summit that we engaged with leadership at a new level. We learned about

the process of the human’s inner saboteur and the stages of listening and understanding our sense of self. This Adelaide trip not only brought us together as a leadership team but helped us grow as individuals and taught us to draw on our individual strengths to reach a communal outcome.

Upper Hunter Student Leadership Summit

This summit allowed us to use the connections we made at Adelaide to achieve a common goal and to share our leadership journey in a way that could benefit other people who are looking to follow a similar path.

As a team, we attempted to replicate what we had experienced in Adelaide to students in Year 9 and 10 from our community.

This summit encouraged us to draw on our strengths while working together as a team of young leaders to educate and come together as a group, while sharing our experiences with school communities within the Upper Hunter.

Scone Grammar School has given us multiple opportunities to promote our leadership journeys and grow as individuals, largely supported by the charity Where There’s A Will.

Many other students across various age groups get similar opportunities to grow and help our community both inside and outside of schools. This is something that we are extremely grateful for and, as a leadership team, we strive to make a difference and ultimately help all young people to flourish.

– Written by Sienna Johnson, Ben Officer, Hallie Croucher and Lachlan Hails

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