Sarah is in ninth grade and understands the value student leaders possess in regard to helping peers make connections and have positive experiences. She's following in the footsteps of her friends from past summers as an EXPLO Ambassador.
I've done a lot of student council. It’s important to have these leadership positions because there's a different experience having a student leader and an adult leader. You can connect to students more. Obviously differences in age will affect the ideas you come up with, so it helps to have a lot of different perspectives.
I remember last year at EXPLO the Ambassadors were really approachable and you could become friends with them really easily. I wanted to be that for someone else this year. Last year, I didn’t talk to anyonefor the first three days, and I was overwhelmed and frazzled because I'd never been in an environment like this. It was really helpful to have the Ambassadors.
We had leadership training before everyone else came to EXPLO and we talked about different ways to approach people that were sitting alone or didn't know what to do. I think that, even beyond EXPLO, it’s important to do that in life because that way you can help other people have a really good experience. Everyone is just trying to have a good time, and if you can help someone do it, and it’s not going to take that much effort, then why not?
Casey Kim