My Leadership Philosophy

Leadership has always been important to me. From a young age, my parents, my teachers and my community promoted the idea of leadership as a crucial aspect to the betterment of not only myself as a person, but the people around me as well. By being a leader myself, as well as being influenced by the actions of others, I have truly learned the significant impact that a seemingly small action can have on a person, a community, and even the world. Though leadership and being a leader itself is difficult to define, I have come to realize that leadership exists within everyone, it is simply up to each person to use their gifts to positively impact others. Even though many people view a leader as someone who is firm, authoritative and bold, these
I get to interact with many people each day, all with significantly different ways of life, having incredibly different means to live. Despite this, they all have the natural, common goal of buying food in order to survive in mind when they come to the grocery store. For some, buying food is not as easy as others and budgeting, couponing, and often having to return products that aren't absolute necessities occurs. In observing all of this, I also noticed that for many customers, prioritizing often means making the decision between buying food or warm clothing, especially in the winter. There are many customers who come into the store in only a t-shirt and sweater in the heart of winter, simply because food is more of a priority in comparison to a jacket. After pondering these observations for awhile, I realized that I have tons of clothing and winter outerwear that I no longer wear but still keep in my closet. I then talked to my friends, realizing that they too had excessive amounts of clothing going unused in their closets. Eventually, I came up with the idea of creating a warm clothing drive at the school, where we would collect any gently used, warm clothing and outerwear, no matter the size and no matter the brand, allowing people to clean out their closets. I took this idea to Youth In Action where it became a
However, in the end, the turnout was incredible. We were able to fill a classroom with warm winter jackets, hats, mittens, scarves, boots and other articles of clothing. It was in this classroom that we set up a small "shop", leaving it open to anyone who either wanted or needed anything in the room. After a few weeks of providing warm clothing to the school community, we came to the conclusion that we had collected way too much than what was needed at the school and it was time to take our campaign further into the community, reaching those who don't go to school but are in need; the people who I see at the grocery