During the Hugh O Brian Youth (HOBY) Leadership Conference in Seward at Concordia University in early June, the students were asked to give a morning of community service—giving back to the community. This statewide leadership conference is offered to every high school in Nebraska-asking them to select one sophomore (10th Grade) leader to attend, learn leadership skills and take those skills back to their schools and incorporate them into their programs.
During the Hugh O Brian Youth (HOBY) Leadership Conference in Seward at Concordia University in early June, the students were asked to give a morning of community service—giving back to the community. This statewide leadership conference is offered to every high school in Nebraska-asking them to select one sophomore (10th Grade) leader to attend, learn leadership skills and take those skills back to their schools and incorporate them into their programs.
The group was divided and about two dozen of the HOBY students met at the Seward Civic Center to work on a variety of Community Service Projects, while almost four dozen were put on a bus and delivered to Goehner, Nebraska at the Seward County Historical Society Museum to volunteer their service.
In Seward, at the Civic Center, one set of students organized the fifty years of scrapbooks on Seward’s Fourth of July Celebration and then tackled the scrapbooks to organized them for the Nebraska Mother’s Club’s storage closet and organize the GFWC Seward Woman’s Club Scrapbook collection as well.
One group tackled the categorizing and organizing the hundreds of Rotary Club banners from across the world-banners presented by visiting Rotarians from other countries – shared and presented at the local Seward Rotary Club meetings over the last nine decades. They had over 200 banners to sort by US States and Countries of the World. There were 94 US banners from 21 states in the US and 26 countries with over 100 banners from around the world. The most banners were from Argentina-14 and California had ten banners in the mix from Rotary Clubs around the state. The plastic tub of banners is now returned to the Seward Rotary, organized and ready to be displayed in an organized manner.
Another group focused on sending out the printed press releases for the 2019 Seward Fourth of July Celebration, while another group filled tourism bags with area brochures for the Seward County Visitors Committee.
At the museum in Goehner, students were divided into groups, working the Seward County Historical Society Volunteers and were asked to clean and polish areas in the main museum, clean and sort items in the school house, as well as the historic Eberspacher home. One delegation worked with the railroad on the museum grounds, another group cleaned and sorted a work area and closet, and another group was asked to work on landscaping and weeding specific areas.
Volunteers at the Seward County Historical Society included Kim Fisher, Jean Kolterman, Ashley Jensen
and Diane Rohren. Following the worktime, the students were all treated to refreshments at both locations and returned to Concordia for an afternoon and evening of leadership activities and workshops.
and Diane Rohren. Following the worktime, the students were all treated to refreshments at both locations and returned to Concordia for an afternoon and evening of leadership activities and workshops.
“We appreciated the work of the HOBY students and hope they return next year. They did an outstanding job, worked very fast and all had great attitudes!” said Jean Kolterman, President of the Seward County Historical Society. “The HOBY program has been around for many years and has grown and developed some wonderful young leaders. The HOBY workforce of volunteers was a major help to our all-volunteer group and we thank them!”