Manaiakalani Student Leadership Conference

It was an ordinary Friday at school. I arrived at 8:10, as usual. I was helping out with assembly, as usual. But something different that was happening today was the Manaiakalani Student Leadership Conference held at Tamaki College. All of the schools in the Manaiakalani programme had to choose a few students to attend this. I was part of the lucky group of students to represent our school, Pt England. The 6 students were Shoal, Makayla, Crusader, Gabriel, Kendrix and myself. Unfortunately, Kendrix couldn't make it so we decided to get my good friend Huelo-Ata to replace him.

The conference was really fun. It was about designing our future and part of the reason why us kids were going, was because it was OUR FUTURE. It wasn't just all fun, there were some parts that were inspiring. For example; Andrew Patterson's presentation that was about chasing our dreams inspired many people. Even ME! Here is a short reflection on the day.

My favourite part of the conference was the Samsung Scavenger Hunt with Telecom. Although our table didn't win, I still had fun playing with the smartphones. I think we could of won if we worked together.
Anyway, my second highlight was listening to Andrew Patterson speak and share his message with us. To chase our dream. One of the things in his presentation that was really interesting was seeing pictures of one of the Google Campuses  I found out that if you worked there you could get free stuff. Anyway, Andrew Patterson also showed us a video on TED Talks. It was a 12 year old boy named Thomas Suarez. Thomas is an app developer. The reason why he showed us this was because he was trying to tell us that we can chase our dream no matter the age. Here is the video of Thomas on TED Talks CLICK!

I can't wait to see what the future is going to look like. I hope the Manaiakalani programme has gotten enough information from us to help them with it. Thank You to everyone who organised the event!