A total of fifty-eight (58) newly constituted leaders of the SAMAHAN Central Board, student leaders representing the interim Campus Club Organizations (CCO) and the interim General Assembly of Class Presidents (GACP), gather together in a special leadership camp at Eden Nature Park, starting today, 23rd April until Friday, 25th April 2013. This activity is initiated by the Ateneo Leadership Center (ALC), through its director Ms. Lilibeth Leh-Arcena (also the concurrent director of the Arrupe Office of Social Formation), and the Office of Student Affairs (OSA), through its director Ms. Theresa S. Eliab.
This summer leadership camp has been carefully planned to provide invited student leaders a thorough orientation on leadership formation sui generis through a series of interactive discussions, conversations, workshops/seminars, and discourses as creative learning strategies for values appreciation and values clarification. This summer camp likewise intends to provide more space for further articulation and appreciation of the demands of leadership formation that the bears the Ateneo “brand,” as articulated in one of the key result areas (KRAs) of the University Strategic Planning last April 2012. Through this three-day convocation, ADDU student leaders in general, and ADDU students specializing in leadership in particular, will be more oriented to the leadership call of faith and the promotion of social justice for the common good, the sue generis leadership principle that has since been actively and aggressively promoted in the university commencing the term of Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ as university president.
This important activity is an appropriate follow-up of the first gathering of student leaders convened by Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ on 29th July 2012, which resulted, among others, in an interactive seminar/workshop on ADDU leadership sui generis. At the end of the three-day leadership camp, it is hoped that the student leaders will be guided appropriately as they craft and formulate long-range plans for their own respective organizations in preparation for the incoming School Year 2013-2014.
The leadership camp will proceed with the following mechanics: There will be invited speakers for each specific topic to guide the participants as they go through the different activities of the three-day sessions. In between the inputs given by invited resource speakers, there will be a series of reflections, small group sharings, round table discussions (RTDs), case analyses, to be capped by journaling and consciousness examen at the end of each day’s session. In-between these selected strategies for individual and group learning process, there will also be team-building exercises to go by as the leadership camp can also be one opportune occasion for different groups of student leaders to get to know one another.
The leadership camp is expected to be participated in fully and actively by invited student leaders in the collegiate level, and is expected to be one fruitful learning opportunity for all participants, as they situate their important role/function one important stakeholder of the university that will promote its vision-mission-goals (VMG). (By M. Isabel S. Actub, Arrupe Communications & Advocacy and Ateneo Leadership Center)