Earlier this month a team from Challenge 2000 arrived at St Francis De Sales in Island Bay where we were greeted by 80 enthusiastic year 6 and 7’s ready and willing to participate in their leadership retreat.

Each year the school sets aside a day for the young people to learn about what it means to be a leader and how they can contribute to leading the school the following year. The theme this year was “Lets lead as one”.

We started the day with introductions, getting to know each other and playing ice breakers outside.

Our first session we gave each group a famous leader, they had to create a drama about this person which included everyone. Each group worked hard and put on am entertaining drama while teaching us something we might not have known about them.

After morning tea, we split into groups and participated in activity based learning (ABL) where the year 7’s competed in an egg drop competition and the year 6’s completed in a game called “mouse traps”. Lots of laughs were had and everyone had a chance to step up and lead.

The afternoon was spent reflecting on what they can bring to the group and creating a mural for the class to hang up next year. To close our day each student participated in our closing prayer, saying one thing they are going to bring to the group next year. A few examples were respect, courage, compassion.

We all had an awesome day and enjoyed our time at St Francis. Thanks for having us, we look forward to hearing how your leadership is developing throughout next year!