The leader Within

Chapter 12: Hansen for Humanity

My high school, Rick Hansen, did not only focus on sports and academic clubs but made sure that students were aware of the conflicts going around in the world. To spread awareness about these conflicts, teachers in Rick Hansen founded clubs such as Model UN and Hansen for Humanity (H4H). Hansen for Humanity is a fairly new club at Rick Hansen secondary school whose goal is to make this world a better place. H4H does this by promoting diversity and raising awareness about social justice issues. The club strive towards making Rick Hansen a welcoming and accepting place by practicing the me to we philosophy. Hansen for Humanity holds numerous events such as RHSS we scare hunger, money drives to buy goats for third world countries, Pink day to support gay people etc.

Everyone is welcomed to Hansen for Humanity and can join the club at any time of the year by attending the weekly meetings. I joined Hansen for Humanity to raise awareness about the conflicts that many students do not know about because Canada is so peaceful and not many people can imagine the conflicts going on in other places that are not as heavenly. I was responsible for taking attendances for the weekly meetings, handle the cash flow for money drives, keep count of the food donations that we collected. Eventually, I wanted to do more than just handle cash flow or take attendance, so I applied for executive position at the club and got accepted. This new position allowed me to speak out in H4H meetings about the conflicts going on in the world and have discussions about how we can help make a difference in this matter. I could talk about the conflicts that I was passionate about and that were important to me and actually had a vote on what issue will we collect donations on.

The students volunteering to run a specific event needed to work together to come up with ways to involve the whole school in that event, raise awareness about it and encourage them to try and make a difference. For example, Hansen for Humanity held a "we scare hunger" day to raise awareness about poverty in third world countries. Me and few other club students worked together to make flyers, spread the word on social media and encourage students to donate food or money. I realized that in order to get students to help me run the event, I needed to provide them with a purpose. The students already knew what to do and how to do it but it made a great difference by sharing a strong sense of why they're doing it and where it's heading. I helped them develop a broad understanding of the team's purpose, and faith in how their role contributes to the whole. I did this by showing them videos and reports of what was happening in those third world countries. This got the students more interested in making the event more effective instead of them just sitting on their phones for the sake of being in a club. I realized that students  tried to achieve higher goals and worked better when they knew how important their role was. This demonstrated that providing a purpose to a team helped them be more driven and dedicated towards achieving a goal which guaranteed better results. In this case the students knew that their efforts helped people who were hungry and needy, so they worked harder on encouraging the students to help make a difference. This made the event more successful and for future sake, I realized that I needed to provide my team with a purpose and make them realize that each one of their role and responsibilities are important and will help make a positive difference in the final product.