Young Round Square California Conference

At the beginning of April, Hackley sent two intrepid pioneer delegates to the Young Round Square of the Americas conference hosted at Chadwick School in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The Hackley seventh graders spent five days exploring the concept of leadership and service with sixty-three other student delegates from Round Square member schools. Faculty members Brad Walters and Rebecca Garfield used the week to network and brainstorm with chaperones from the other twenty-two schools, which hailed primarily from the Americas (fourteen from Canada, five from the U.S., one from Bermuda, one from Peru), with guest schools from India and South Korea.

The conference theme, “Set Sail on Leadership” imbued the variety of exciting activities and venues, ranging from beach clean-up and marine biology lessons on the coast to team-building challenges in the mountains of San Bernardino National Forest. Delegates packed 10,000 dehydrated meals for children in Haiti, built a dozen bicycles for local children in Big Bear, brainstormed community projects to bring back to their own schools, and listened to a panel on social justice entrepreneurship.

The keynote speaker for the conference was Father Gregory Boyle, who offers social services and employment to high-risk youth and former gang members through Homeboy Industries. He spoke of the power of kinship in breaking down barriers and diminishing differences. The following day conference participants enjoyed a picnic lunch prepared by the Homegirl Café, and listened as one of the employees shared her story and the opportunities Homeboy Industries had provided her. Alexi and Alyssa were thrilled to enjoy one more sandwich from the Homeboy Café in the Los Angeles airport before returning to Hackley!

The students agreed that the best thing about the conference was meeting students from so many different schools around the world and making new friends. They look forward to finding ways to help instill the spirit of the Round Square ideals -- Internationalism, Democracy, Environment, Adventure, Leadership and Service -- even more fully in our Middle School. Last month they shared their experience at the conference with their peers in an assembly Allen Hall, explaining to their peers that the Young Round Square program is just unfolding at Hackley and that students should brainstorm how they would like the program to develop.

• Read their PDF of the presentation
• Watch the video they made to introduce Hackley at the conference
• More Hackley News stories.