Student Council members, Seth Locke-McAllister, Junior, and Mackenzie (Mackie or Kenzie) Quiles, Freshman, were honored to be chosen from a pool of candidates to attend and represent Lake Region at Harvard for their FLIPS Leadership Conference on April 13th and 14th. The annual conference focuses on service based leadership, and teaching high school students how to become more involved in their respective schools to help build community programming. At the end of the day, Mr. and Mrs. Gariepy would pick them up from the University and they would debrief what they had learned that day, and despite working for 7 hours each day, they were energized and excited to share their about their learning. Seth and Kenzie worked with students from all across the United States who had traveled to Harvard for their shared interest in service leadership, along with Harvard Students who ran this entire conference. 

At the close of the weekend, each

student had to propose a capstone project in a “shark-tank” like setting. Seth’s project focused on finding ways to increase the amount of mental health services that could be in schools, and he hopes to bring this project forward to Lake Region. Seth states that they got to “meet with a diverse group of people who had the same values and morals.” When Mrs. Gariepy asked Kenzie and Seth at the end of the weekend how they felt about the whole experience, and if it was worth it, both students emphatically agreed that it was worth attending. They were excited to bring their ideas forward to Student Council at Lake Region to hopefully build a stronger community in our school.

If you would like to learn more about their experiences, reach out to Kenzie or Seth.