Student leaders gathering this weekend

This year the Association of Washington Student Leaders is holding its annual conference in southwest Washington, and local Wahkiakum High School students are getting involved.

The bulk of the conference is being held at Mark Morris High School. As the host, student leaders at Mark Morris were responsible for the planning of this year’s event. Last fall when they got the news, they asked student leaders from Kalama, R.A. Long and Wahkiakum to join them in the process.

Wahkiakum High School senior Sydney Hansen was invited to join the 15 plus member committee after participating in another leadership event, Make the Change.

“I’ve loved every second of it,” Hansen said of her experience on the committee. “We learned about organization. Everything has been on us students to do. We came up with the ideas and it was our job to execute. It’s given me a feeling for adulthood.”

The three day conference begins this Friday and ends two days later, on Sunday. There are two guest speakers, and some high schools will be giving presentations. There is also a social at R.A. Long on Saturday night and a service project at Kalama High School on Saturday afternoon.

In partnership with an outreach program at United Way, two sessions of students will meet in Kalama from 2:10-5:00 p.m. and form an assembly line to package a total of 100,000 meals. The meals will be given to five food banks in Cowlitz and Wahkiakum Counties, including the Wahkiakum County Food Bank, which will receive 20,000 of those meals, according to Hansen, who was on the subcommittee for the service project.

A couple Wahkiakum students have joined Hansen in the planning and they, along with 10 other delegates from the local high school will attend the conference.

According to Hansen, they are expecting more than 600 students from throughout the state of Washington to attend.

Conference hosts were responsible for finding overnight stays for these students. Wahkiakum initially committed to finding a bus full, which is approximately 30 students, but generous families opened their homes and now there will be 60 students from around the state visiting the county.

Hosts were asked to provide three students a place to sleep for two nights, one dinner, two breakfasts and transportation to Wahkiakum High School.

Sixteen or 17 hosts have stepped up, according to Hansen, but she’s pretty sure that Principal Stephanie Leitz has volunteered to take in the most.

“I didn’t know many of the people I was going to work with but now we are all super close,” Hansen said. “We’re excited to put on the conference, because we’ve done it all. It’s been a blast.”

And it sounds like it will be.