Uplands hosts young leaders from all over the world

Uplands College will proudly host the first-of-its-kind Africa International Student Leadership Symposium on March 19.

As a result of its own international networking, Uplands College was invited five years ago to represent Africa and become a member of a group of schools that host or attend a student leadership symposium annually.

The attending schools hail from 10 countries over five continents, including Oman, China, Belgium, Germany, UK, USA, Argentina, Canada and South Africa. Additionally, the 60 delegates represent 36 nationalities.

Uplands students have since attended conferences in USA and China. The South African (Uplands) delegates have always made an excellent impression on the founding members and as a result the school has been awarded the hosting of this conference in March.

The chosen delegates for 2019 are Izabella Carvalho, Kayla Schefermann, Hansel Awogu, Frederich de Koker, Lucy van der Meulen and Ceilidh Ferguson, who themselves represent Nigeria, Swaziland and South Africa.

The focus of the conference is leadership. This topic is usually presented within a theme. Having considered the environmental climate in Africa, Uplands’ chosen theme is “Illegal Trade”. “We shall cover the ubiquitous wildlife trafficking and poaching but will include the other side of this debate, namely breadline earnings, poaching for food, and knock-off trade, where the humanitarian aspect should be explored by the delegates,” says Sharon van Reenen, head of student advancement at Uplands.

“A wealth of expertise and experience is on our doorstep, within our community, and thus our speaker line-up is impressive: Quinton Coetzee of ‘Wildside Wisdom’, Bonné de Bod (presenter and producer of the film, Stroop), Trang Nguyen of Vietnam and Peter Rogers, a wildlife veterinarian, to name a few.”

As always, the delegates are to come up with a plan of action to take home and share with their peers, schools and communities. This way the impact of what they have learned at this symposium can be paid forward and shared with the world.

“Uplands is proud to host this established, successful initiative. We greatly anticipate showing off our incredible school, community and country to all members,” Van Reenen said.

Schools that will be attending the symposium at Uplands are ABA (Muscat, Oman), International School of Brussels (Brussels, Belgium); Mercersburg Academy (Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, USA), Westlake Academy (Westlake, Texas, USA), Gauss Gymnasium (Worms, Germany), Nanjing Foreign Language School (Nanjing, People’s Republic of China) and Uplands College.

During a recent Wessa meeting the delegates also met Kathi Lynn Austin, who spoke about the illegal rhino horn trade.