Summer of Leadership Service will help you better serve our community

By Grace Newman

Here’s how to stand out and shine in your community: be a part of our hot new item, SOLS!

This new program was inspired by HOBY, an organization that prepares high schoolers to find a passion for leadership, service, and innovation. Our very own Tempe Prep juniors attended the Hugh O’Brian Youth leadership organization this past summer. “I learned so much about leadership while making new friends,” Kelley Clark says. The program also helped show them the importance of community through many team-building activities.

Tempe Prep's HOBY participants, from left: Kelly Clark, Noah Frazier, Clara Moffitt, Hayden Sampson and Maya Kostov. — Tempe Prep’s HOBY participants, from left: Kelly Clark, Noah Frazier, Clara Moffitt, Hayden Sampson and Maya Kostov.

SOLS, also known as Summer Of Leadership Service, is like another version of HOBY, where you can volunteer, participate in your community, and sharpen your leadership skills.

Maya Kostov explains, “It’s similar to what National Honor Society offers, but with more variety in opportunities and available to all high schoolers.”

Some programs SOLS offers are Project Cure, ICM Food and Clothing Bank, Feed My Starving Children, blood drives, Days for Girls, Paz de Cristo, Umom family shelter, and Teen Court. The National Honor Society has only some of these and also only involves the juniors and seniors, but with SOLS, there is a wide range of options.

It’s also a fun way to get the required hours. Hayden Sampson explains how great of an opportunity it is “to learn more about the service organizations we’re going to have to work with later on in the year. I got a lot of service hours, and I’m super blessed to have been a part of it.”

So instead of worrying about service hours the whole month of May, get a head start by joining SOLS! It may even inspire you to go past the 10-hour minimum and find a bigger purpose in serving in your community.