Paige Lee recently represented Poplarville High School at the Mississippi HOBY Conference. The Hugh O’Brian Youth leadership program for high school students across the United States. Mississippi hosts a HOBY leadership conference each summer. HOBY enables students to participate in a unique leadership training, service-learning, and motivation-building experiences beginning a lifelong dedication to improving the lives of others.
Each school in Mississippi is encouraged to send one rising junior to attend. Paige describes her experience as one she will never forget. She said, “HOBY was amazing, it was one of the best experiences of my life! I had so much fun, met so many different people, and made some life long friends. At HOBY each day we had a panel of speakers that talked about Personal Leadership, Group Leadership, and Social Leadership. Some of the speakers were Jake McGraw, Cathy Northington, Barbie Bassett, Dallas Bakers, and Will Graves. I learned so much from each of the them. They really helped me understand what it truly means to be a leader. We also did community service on the second day at We Will Go Ministries, it was really fun. I did the littlest of things, but it made the biggest impact on the people that I helped. Throughout the three days, we had lots of group time. This was were we discussed what we thought about each of the leadership panels and I got to hear others opinions on them which really helped me understand leadership. HOBY was started by Mr. O’Brian himself, after a trip to Africa, where Dr. Albert Schweitzer made him look at leadership in a different way. HOBY’S goal is to inspire and develop our global community of youth and volunteers to a life dedicated to leadership, service, and innovation.”
