In June, a group of members from the Malad FFA Chapter got a chance to attend the Washington Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C.. Over 350 FFA students from all over the United States gathered in one conference for one week with one goal, to become leaders. The Malad FFA chapter had the opportunity to bring four FFA students. In this conference, we learned how to act as a leader by doing what you can, with what you have, where you are. 

As D.C. is known to be a city full of history and leadership, as we attended this conference we toured the historic monuments and saw places that would never have been there if not for strong acts of leadership. This conference had one goal and it was to inspire the future generation to act as leaders just as others before us. BreElle Ferree - a WLC participant - said, “It changed my perspective on a lot of things and I just learned a lot in general. I learned a lot about other people and myself. I always thought leadership was something that people were gifted with, but it turns out, leadership is a choice.”

We learned how to act as leaders not only in FFA but how to take what we have learned in D.C. and take it back to our towns and communities to make the change we see fit. All of the students were assigned to come up with their Living To Serve plan or LTS plan. This plan included what issue we are trying to solve, how we will take action on said issue, how we will receive funding for our plan, and how to get our community involved. Some of these plans included helping wounded military, helping give food to hungry community members, and helping give water to those without it. 

One WLC participant, Sabrina Nipco stated, “You have to put yourself into other people’s shoes. We do this in order to understand what the situation really is. Once you find out different perspectives you can try to teach/lead others in the ways you have found most impactful. When you are a leader you have to learn to be understanding even when you feel it is unnecessary.”

“Another big thing I learned about was advocacy and what makes an advocate” Alexa Cram stated, “An advocate has empathy and respect and they take action because they see something that needs it. Everyone can be an advocate… If you have the ability you have the response-ability.” As we learned about advocacy we learned how hard it is when you can no longer advocate for someone else and completely rely on someone else. 

A quote in the National Holocaust Museum by Martin Niemöller summed up the importance of advocacy, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” And that is another example of how they used the historic sites to teach us about leadership.

As all of the WLC participants would agree, the biggest take away from the Washington Leadership Conference includes not waiting to do anything and simply action upon it. My personal take aways from this conference was, that there is no need to wait for anything, if you see change that needs to be made you shouldn’t question it, you should just do it. There will be people working against you but if you haven’t started doing anything, the only thing stopping you is yourself. The courage to try mixed with the passion to do will make anyone a leader. This conference opened all of our eyes a little wider and grew our leadership skills exponentially. This was an amazing opportunity for us as high school students and proud FFA members.