Empathy to Impact: Student Voices on Global Citizenship Education & Community Engagement

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Welcome to the empathy to impact. Podcast today we are visiting NIST in Bangkok.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And I have a couple of service learning leaders joining me today to talk a little bit about their experience at NIST as part of Service Co. And some of the organizations that they support and work with at school, and how they've grown as leaders through this

Scott Jamieson (he/him): experience. So I'm really excited for our conversation today. And before we start I'm gonna pass over to Sento and Angela to just give a quick introduction. So you get to know them a little bit.

Sento: Yeah. So Hi, my name is Santo. Currently, in year 11, at NIST. And I run 2 service groups, one specifically on eliminating singles, plastics in the bank or community and at school, and a second service group called Angel, which is specifically targeting, supporting cancer patients and their families.

Sento: Hi, my name is Angela. I'm a student in year 9 and Miss, and I'm the leader of a service group that mainly focuses on environmental sustainability. And it's called Eco.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Angela, why don't we start with you? I would love to learn a little bit more about your work with Eco! And some of the initiatives that you have, maybe in your school, or also who you might be working with in your community as well.

Sento: So our community partners are Roy Rock and the elephant Poopoo paper community in Chiang Mai. So our main like

Sento: import over, like the products that we promote is from elephant. Poo, poo paper. And they are in organization based in Chiang Mai. They try to look in ways that we can have alternative usage, then papers that come from cutting down forest. So they have innovated away, which is by having a process to filter out

Sento: paper, by having them made of elephant poop, and they make very beautiful products, and we have Appreciation week dedicated to their roses, which is known amongst our community. And, eco! Believe it's a very good opportunity to let our community know that there is alternatives to paper sustainability and ways that will help our world.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I am impressed that you can talk about elephant poo! With a straight face, and I had no idea that it could be used to make paper products.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): So how did you get involved with this organization? And how did this partnership develop with this group in Thailand?

Sento: I got into eco, because I feel like sustainability is a like a problem that really faces all the time because we're living in this planet, and we don't want to consume more than we need. So I thought, the ways that Eco has like

Sento: work towards this problem was really nice because they found a more local community, which is Chiang Mai, and they have provided us with like a lot of information. Throughout the years

Sento: I've known from past leaders. They've actually went to Chiang Mai and visited the original workshop, and they have said that although they are like working in business and ways to sell paper. But they do give us students running the service group a really big discount, and also at the same time they tried to promote us with more knowledge

Sento: on like ways, that this problem will help improve our plan.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I love that that sounds so amazing. And I love how there's really this reciprocal relationship with your community partner, how you're learning from them, and then you're creating an opportunity for them to distribute some of their products. And I hope that my next visit to Miss I can get some paper or something that was originally made out of elephant. Poo! I'm very excited to check that on my next visit to your school

Scott Jamieson (he/him): sent over to switch over to you and talk to talk about your clothes. This maybe start with plastic and kind of what your Service Club is doing there you mentioned in school, but also in the community, and then maybe you can talk a little bit about angel wishes as well, which I think is such a cool organization. Sure. Yeah, see, this is where I messed this up is such a cool club to be part of.

Sento: Okay, yeah. So for starting off with plastic freeness, actually, we're the third generation of leaders. So it's actually been going on for at least around 4 or 5 years. So it's been quite a few years since it's initial establishment. But since then we've changed the school rapidly from a beginning where the school used to use plastic straws. We had plastic

Sento: water bottles. We had plastic single-use utensils all the time in our cafeteria, and since our

Sento: previous leaders. We were able to change that to first paper straws. And with this kind of data collection from students and parents and teachers on

Sento: how they didn't like the paper straws. We change it again to write straws. And with like, now, new products like bubble tea at our school. Yeah, bubble T is fantastic, but because we had plastic bubble T straws again. We tackled the same issue and introduced new bubble tea straws instead.

Sento: Yes, but.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I.

Sento: Sorry apologies.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I was gonna jump in there real quick. I think so many people who are listening are gonna be very jealous that you guys have bubble tea at school, and I think it's so cool you're able to kind of see that issue that environmental kind of downside of having that with all the plastic straws. I can't believe also, like plastic cutlery as well. It's just a huge impact. I'm sure the amount of you know the reduction in the waste from your school by shifting to something more sustainable. I think that's so cool.

Sento: Yeah, and we initially started in school in house. But then, we realized that actually, now that there's mist has become plastic, free, or almost completely single, use plastic free. We realize that larger issue was something outside of just our campus, which was like cafes

Sento: outside of school, you know. And the students perception that actually using classic isn't so bad. So I think we decided to switch our lens a little bit and Track tried to tackle restaurants and cafes outside of this community, which I think is really important, because we realize that in our little bubble everybody understands.

Sento: you know, the impact of plastic and why we can't use plastic. But we need to understand that not everybody has that kind of mindset, and they have families that they need to support. We need to understand the economic aspect, such as you know, plastic is much cheaper, and these businesses are

Sento: well meant to sustain their own families. So, keeping that in mind, we decided to

Sento: ensure that when we present alternatives we come in a more empathetic lens. So we come with the economics in mind

Sento: finding cheaper alternatives that are also sustainable. The social elements? What do students and their consumers want to make sure that their business isn't hindered, and also in a more emotional lens. We don't want to be coming in with like a martyr kind of perspective. Wanna come in with, let's fix this together. Let's improve this together. Kind of lens. So that's one of the biggest projects we're working on.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I think that's really amazing. I think there's some really cool takeaways from what you just said, that idea of empathy, and how we have to make sure that we're looking at this from all the different perspectives

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and really understanding, you know why the we're using the single use plastic, you know it, isn't it? Probably cheaper. And there are reasons and make rendering. You know, these small businesses of these small cafes? Yeah, that are trying to support a family, and really kind of having that deep understanding like through conversations.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And I love to talk about yeah, not coming in as, Hey, we have all the answers, but really coming in as a collaborator to think about how we can approach this from a place of equity

Scott Jamieson (he/him): where, you know we're not. Then that's sometimes challenging at international schools. You know, we often are a school community that is a little bit higher socioeconomically socio economic status than some of the people in the community around us. And you know, that's

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I don't. I don't want. It's, I guess, typical of international schools in their with their communities. Just because

Scott Jamieson (he/him): of the way things are set up, and

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I'm a little more curious about how you approach like someone in a cafe, or how do you find

Scott Jamieson (he/him): people who are interested in working with you.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): How does that initial conversation go? Can you share a little bit about that?

Sento: Yeah, so actually, the cafes that we're targeting at the moment are somehow always connected to a list student or a list like individual. So we usually use that kind of pathway as a first step. And that first connection, just because we don't. Wanna of course we don't wanna come in to a cafe or restaurant that has no idea who list students are. And these

Sento: like couple of kids just come in and just start talking about like changing their business isn't a really good strategy. So we always target

Sento: through a connection through a personal connection. First. Yeah. And then the conversation would go something like.

Sento: Firstly, we'll kind of gauge how they feel about environmental sustainability, whether or not they're like super on the the far end of the spectrum where they're like, yes, environment, sustainability. Well, of course I'll get rid of the plastic, or they're more on the hesitant, reluctant side where they're like, I'll hear you out, but also keep in mind my side, and which is completely fair. So we have that initial discussion to understand

Sento: where on their on the spectrum they are, and then from that we kind of

Sento: step into whether or not. Alright. Let's introduce these alternatives first, or let's step back and understand where they're coming from so one particular case study that we had was

Sento: We had a cafe where they were reluctant to Co. You know, change to alternatives because they're a business, and in order to maintain a business, they need to keep in mind the cost and the

Sento: what they gain. And so they were like. I love that I love what you're doing. But

Sento: we can't have that unless it's

Sento: below a certain price limits that we have. And so we were like, All right cool. We'll find a price lower than that. But then they were also like, actually, there's also issues with branding. And there's that kind of appeal to the student body that if we don't have

Sento: our branding, this certain color or certain imagery on our products we can't sell better. So we were like, All right. And then that gave us a little bit more insight into what we were missing. So we were missing this aspect of marketing and the importance of brand appeal to these smaller companies and smaller restaurants, because, of course, of course, they'll care about the marketing right? Because

Sento: it's not like. They're like Mcdonald's, where they're everywhere and everybody knows who they are. So, keeping that in mind, we step back and asked a lot of experts on marketing. We asked your schools

Sento: marketing head to understand a little bit about branding, to step back and reflect about ourselves and be like, oh, we didn't know anything about marketing at all, and we couldn't understand their perspective at all. And so that was a big challenge. And I'm really glad that we had that kind of case study to work with.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I think it's really interesting is the learning process there. And to really understand the different perspectives, understand how that business works, what's their priorities that may be different from our priorities. And I think you know we have. We're trying to plant these seeds of sustainability.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): but we have to wait to see, you know, is that soil kind of ready for planting, or we kind of throwing this down where it's probably not gonna grow. And I think, having those conversations and building that level of trust and that level of collaboration can really help this to grow. So I think that's really amazing.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I wanna shift a little bit and let you share a little bit about angel wishes. And I learned a little bit about this when I was visiting back in Pto. When I had a chance to be on campus, and it's such a cool event. And I wonder if you could share just a little bit about how that organization gets started and what they do with Angel wishes.

Sento: Yeah. So actually, Angel wishes is a service group that me and my 2 other fellow leaders created backup. I believe in 2022. And this was because, each of us had experiences where we lost a close one to cancer. And because of this personal experience, we were like, how can we support other people who are either struggling with cancer or know someone close to them who is struggling with cancer? And how

Sento: do we approach this with empathy, with understanding

Sento: and

Sento: with a compassion that's

Sento: with a compassion that you know, everybody can feel comfortable with when we're working with them. So a big problem that we came across was that when we

Sento: want to work with people and people who are dealing with terminal illness, sometimes we need to understand that

Sento: what we think they want is not what they really want. So that needs assessment was so vital and creating our service group. And we were like, what do people need? What do they want? And sometimes it's not, you know, get well cards. It's not video messages. It's not what we think that they want, but rather, sometimes it's financial support. They want donations. They want supports that they can pay off their medical bills. And that's completely

Sento: what they need. And that's what we need to provide if we want to really support them so needs assessment, was the biggest keyword and the creation of angel wishes because of how sensitive the topic was, and because of how important compassion, and not coming in with that. Oh, I know what you need kind of mindset.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And I think that's so important. A lot of times we get excited about a topic, and we get excited, and we care a lot, and we have these great intentions. But if we don't really deeply understand the needs of the community we're looking to work with, then we're not likely to have the same kind of impact, and in some cases our actions might even turn out to be harmful.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and we go always go into this with the best intentions. But if we're not careful and we don't take the time to really do a needs assessment and engage as listeners and really understand all the different perspectives and the different needs of that community. I think that's where things kind of go a little sideways sometimes when we're thinking about service. So I love that you guys are talking about needs assessment and really

Scott Jamieson (he/him): being listeners and not just coming in and say, Hey, this is what we wanna do.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): you know, hey, this is, we're really interested in this topic. And

Scott Jamieson (he/him): you know, what's a way we can have a positive impact. So I think that sounds absolutely amazing.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I wanna and just check in, I'm sorry. Do you wanna add something today? Or did I talk over you alright cool?

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I wanna also talk a little bit about Service Co. And there are a lot of different Service club opportunities.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And actually, maybe before we get into service. Co, how did you end up in the service groups like, how does that happen at your school? At what point do students get to participate in service? Is it something that everybody does. Is there? Is it kind of a a personal choice? How does that work for for a student who maybe wants to get involved in service, at your school.

Sento: I think, like to get involved in service is like finding your real passion and what you want to improve in society

Sento: like, there's many different areas, like humanitarian or environmental. I think it really depends on the person's interest and what they want to dedicate themselves into. And for me, it was more about creating a better environment.

Sento: because, like from the past cities I have lived in, they had huge pollution problems and also the lack of green spaces. So I found that it was really a huge problem in our society, and also how much paper we were just consuming every day. So then I found. Eco, and I found that

Sento: out there, like they were helping in many different ways and not just telling people you need to stop using paper, but more in ways that's just

Sento: promoting, like more other alternative ways.

Sento: And I think as for Service Co, I think it's more like a general idea of getting to know more about what each service group does. And I feel like I want to, after like 2 years of being in like environmental sustainability. I wanted to more. Look at the overall of all of the impacts that all the Service group was doing. And I feel like that through that Lens service. Co. Was like the best choice.

Sento: That's oh, my goodness, that was amazing. I think

Sento: Angela has a really unique perspective, because she's one of a really valuable middle schoolers, and it at NIST. We have a really interesting system where middle school and high school come together in service groups to for a joint cause. So at NIST. We have, I believe, around 35 plus service groups at the moment, and each of them have a distinct

Sento: goal, a mission and a vision. And in these service groups we have leaders, of course, but these leaders can range from middle schoolers like Angela, who have built their own service group from a very young age, or sometimes they're older students. But regardless service goes approach to how do we communicate? How to

Sento: create meaningful impact is exactly. It's the same across the board. So I think that regardless of age, regardless of where you come from, how long you've been at NIST, how immersed you are. And you know the culture that we have at this it doesn't really matter, because service goes. Approach is exactly the same, and that we cultivate

Sento: genuine empathy. And we cultivate genuine, meaningful impact. And how do you.

Sento: you know, also communicate meaningful impacts in his community and give back to in his community.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Oh, I love that. I think that's fantastic. And I think it's so important when we have so many different service groups. And you know. Sometimes those can sort of sit idle sometimes, but all your service groups through the leadership of Service Co. Are all kind of actively engaged, all working with community partners, all with kind of different

Scott Jamieson (he/him): kind of approaches to how they want to have an impact. And I think that's so cool.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): What leadership skills have you developed as part of your experience with your service clubs or with Service Co. How have you grown as leaders through this process?

Sento: I think for me, it's definitely like really encouraging to join Service Group, because I feel like you just making such a big change to like the environment or the society. And I think through like being like service youth leader of Eco, I got to learn more like responsibility because you're basically making

Sento: the direction which your service group is going. And like seeing how like these different system combine to make. To work towards a good call is like really encouraging, and also like, by working with service. Co. I got to see like and also get inspired by the like older leaders, because they are much more experience. And I was able to see like areas which

Sento: I can improve on and just generally work towards better towards. Hmm.

Sento: yeah. And another thing for me in particular to leadership was genuine compassion.

Sento: because I, at the beginning, before I joined the Service Co. I was under the impression that

Sento: you know, people who don't participate in service, or people who don't care about service. They're just uneducated. They just don't understand, and if we do teach them enough, they'll be able to understand. And I came from that perspective because I didn't understand that there's much more layers to

Sento: what a person believes

Sento: more than just the service level that I could see, so that compassion was cultivated throughout, being in serviceco, because you have people who

Sento: come in with proposals that are so focused on one thing that they cannot see anything else. And how do you, as a service co rep support these people with compassion and understanding and guiding them in the right direction as not to lose their, you know, wonderful passion towards a particular

Sento: event or project, but to actually empower that. And how do you make it more meaningful than it can ever be?

Sento: Yeah. So that compassion and understanding towards others, I think, was the biggest thing in terms of leadership, and that has bled into every single other leadership. Opportunity I've had as well, especially in angel wishes and plastic freeness so experiences that I've learned in Service Co. Has a

Sento: profound impacts on me as a leader. Outside of that.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): That's amazing to hear. I think that sounds so cool because you're right. A lot of these things we're learning as leaders are so transferable into other spaces.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I wanna zoom in a little bit on something Angela mentioned talking about how your Service Co. Is made up from a pretty broad range of ages, and we don't often have opportunities to working groups like that in schools, just because we're sort of categorized into kind of our grade levels, which are all kind of everyone's the same age.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): What are some advantages that you see of having these opportunities to work in multi-age groups like service go.

Sento: I feel like

Sento: being able to be in such a like a wide range of like ages or like backgrounds. It's like, first of all inspiring, because seeing how like these different people.

Sento: like from different ages and different countries, are able to like, come together just to work to work towards a like a better cost for society, and also, like being like the younger member you're able to see like areas you'll be able to improve or work towards as you get older, and like, just from a meeting I had this morning, it was with your 5 students, and they wanted to donate a whole

Sento: band set towards the school who weren't so privileged and just seeing how these different age groups can be so inspired, like even at like 9, 10 years old really like inspiring me more to like work towards like better and getting like more inspiration from like the older generation.

Sento: Yeah, and from like, actually the like the older, quote, unquote, older perspective. I think there's nothing more valuable than our younger members voices, and the more that I'm in service, the more

Sento: adamant I am that our younger voices are much more important than sometimes our older voices, just because,

Sento: the world that they grew up in

Sento: is different. And even if it's an age difference of what? 3 years or 4 years, it's actually quite profound, and what they experience, how they learn best, which can bleed into how we should teach service at our school. So constantly receiving feedback from our younger members is so vital, and if you want to establish service at your own school, which I highly recommend. But if you want to create a team that is

Sento: able to create change across the school, then you're gonna have to have representatives from across the school and not just students, but also from, you know, parents from teachers, from staff members, faculty. Everybody in between, I think, is so vital. Just because if you don't have a certain demographic.

Sento: then you'll lose such a vital understanding of your school.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I think that's really well said, I think that this is definitely a community effort. You talk about the work you're doing to

Scott Jamieson (he/him): reduce the amount of paper you use, or using more sustainable alternatives to paper across your community reducing plastic across your community. If we want that, buy in, if we want that to be successful, we need to make that inclusive. We need to create that sense of unity and belonging

Scott Jamieson (he/him): around these ideas and really invite people in as soon as we start making this exclusionary. We're we're shutting people out, and we're already kind of setting ourselves up to be certainly less successful.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): So I I love how you're talking about. You know them value of different perspectives. And you're absolutely right. The world is changing so fast that you know the experiences that young people have are very different, even going down. Just, you know, a few different grade levels. So I think, having those different voices in the room can really add that diversity of perspective. And you're right. Give you that insight on how best to kind of bring these issues

Scott Jamieson (he/him): to the community in a way that inspires them to work towards solutions.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And that kind of leads me to my next question.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): So a lot of these issues we're talking about. We think about plastic pollution, or we think about, you know, waste at our school or thinking about, you know, some of the healthcare related issues like cancer that your Service Club is is addressing. These are big big issues.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Yet

Scott Jamieson (he/him): students at your school are finding ways to have a positive impact.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I wonder if you could share maybe a little bit of a call to action

Scott Jamieson (he/him): for our listeners on, rather than being overwhelmed by some of these big issues.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): how do we empower them so they that they can through their work have a meaningful impact.

Sento: I think, like locating their like action down really helps them to visualize this goal being achieved.

Sento: For eco, we have dedicated these bamboo baskets to each classroom throughout the school

Sento: to let students see that if you only have a one page, use paper, maybe these are good opportunities to put them into the bamboo basket, and we collect these throughout the years and during our community partnership week, which is with the younger students like in Year 3. We let them make paper booklets with them. And this is a way to just like inspire, like

Sento: students from different ages, to be able to see how they're like little changes can help the world. And also rather than just telling them that how important sustainability is, you're able to let them visualize this being achieved and letting them feel like they're being proud of what they're doing, which is like reducing a lot of waste in our communities.

Sento: Really good. Yeah. And for me, maybe just one thing that I'd say to any listeners who want to create their own service. Cooper have a passion is to start small, and which sounds a little bit counterintuitive because these issues are so big, but actually, the more that you participate in service. I think Angela can speak to this as well. The more you realize that starting off small is

Sento: the fastest way to create the largest change. And a good example of this, for example, was

Sento: our recycling program. So at NIST, plastic free NIST

Sento: supported

Sento: creation of bins that you know sort our waste down into recyclable materials, non recyclable materials and put them across the school. We were like. This is a great idea, a large scale project right off the bat great.

Sento: It failed tremendously, and the reason why it failed was because we tried to do a such a wild, wide scale initiative without understanding what does it look like on a smaller scale. And so we toned it back down, and we created a

Sento: In in partnership with a organization called Trash. Lucky we created our own recycling station, a one place, one stop shop, basically to put all your recyclables there, and a pickup truck would bring it to the recycling station. Just one spot, and that sounds like not a lot of change. But when you look at the data, we, I believe we have over 200 kg of

Sento: recyclable materials collected every year.

Sento: which is a tremendous amount of impact for such a small location. But we realize that actually.

Sento: from

Sento: this experience we learned that starting off big

Sento: is the worst way to create big change. But starting off small, taking baby steps.

Sento: seeing what something could look like, but on a more small scale is the best way to collect data. Best way to understand who you're working with, and the best way to understand what are your next steps. So to anyone who's listening, I think the biggest advice from me would be to start off small, no matter how small you think it is, I think it's the first stepping stone to a larger impact.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Beautiful. I think that was amazing.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And I love how Angel is talking about.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): visualize our desired future like we're really good at visualizing dystopian futures through some of the books you read and some of the movies you watch, but it's a lot harder to visualize, like what is a sustainable future look like and sound like and feel like.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And if we can take a minute to think about that and really visualize that future we want, and what does our aspirational 2035 or 2040 look like? If we can be thinking about that, that really helps us to think about what actions we might be able to take right now. And just like Angela was saying with the younger students, inspiring them to work towards that future where they would. The future they want to live in.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): And oftentimes, when we're designing projects sent out just like you're saying, we often say we want them to be relevant, meaningful, and achievable.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and sometimes that does involve dreaming, big, but starting small

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and recognizing that those small, positive

Scott Jamieson (he/him): actions they add up and what the world needs. We're not looking for this magical one big solution. It's millions and millions of these small positive actions where we're having a positive impact on an issue, but also on mindsets and shifting those mindsets

Scott Jamieson (he/him): into something that is more sustainable. And I also love you're both talking about data and being able to gather data to measure if we're having an impact, and that allows us to be reflective and refine our ideas. And look at how we grow over time. So such amazing advice. I really appreciate both of you sharing that.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Is there anything else that you would like to share without listeners, that I haven't asked the right question to allow you to share, yet.

Sento: I think maybe something about

Sento: us in leadership positions in terms of organizing fellow members. Because, of course, you know, the idea behind leadership is that we're model leaders, right? But then I think nobody really talks about the importance of how do we communicate with our fellow members? Because we seem. You know, there's a culture surrounding leadership that we think that

Sento: a leader is someone that just tells everyone else what to do. And just like stands on top of everybody else. I think the more you recognize what really great leaders are. And we both seen really good leaders. When we were younger,

Sento: Our older leaders were excellent. And what we've seen from them was that

Sento: they first of all

Sento: always work the hardest out of anyone else, and they always come from place of

Sento: of genuine list. And this genuineness, if you want to be a leader, you can demonstrate through your actions more than anything so words can say you can say whatever you'd like, but I think the most impactful to fellow members is your actions. So if you wanna, for example in my case.

Sento: you know, argue against single use plastics, then you have to embody that right, and you have to

Sento: be that representation of

Sento: what a prime example would be to your younger members, and you have that responsibility

Sento: as a leader. You have that ethical, you know, obligation to

Sento: be someone that your members can look up to, not from a more hierarchical standpoint, but more from a genuine sense of respect.

Sento: This is someone I want to be, because this is, if this leader were everywhere, the world would be a better place, and you have to be that someone, I think.

Sento: and for me I feel like like being the younger generation and like service like in as middle schoolers. I feel like you just need to know that, like your voice matters and like you need to spread your voice

Sento: cause in eco. All of our members are actually from the same year level, which means we're more comfortable with trying things with each other, and I feel like being able to like

Sento: just talk amongst ourselves with very like being comfortable. To share all of our opinions is very important, and also from the service. Go. Perspective is that you know that your voice matters because you, from the different backgrounds that you come from, you have different perspective, and everybody else, and you experience things differently than they have experienced before.

Sento: and being able to know that, like whatever your belief is or like. Whatever you believe in, it's that you need to have your voice heard first, and if nobody knows what you're working towards, then I don't think anybody can help you.

Sento: yeah, that communication is so important. Right?

Scott Jamieson (he/him): I read a book by Matthew Burzen.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and it's called The Power of Giving Away Power, and he talks about leadership like a constellation rather than leadership, like a pyramid. So we don't have that person standing at the top. This idea of the constellation is that we're all leaders.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and we want all of our voices to be heard, and we wanna recognize all of our strengths. And I love what you're talking about when you say leadership and thinking about that idea of a leader leading by example and being respect.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): and

Scott Jamieson (he/him): Drew, I don't want to articulate this.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): A leader leading by example and a leader you wanna respect and a leader who inspires you. And I think that's so important. And you paint such an amazing portrait of a leader through your words, and I think that sounds so cool. And I'm

Scott Jamieson (he/him): really inspired by all the work that you're doing at your school in your own service clubs as leaders in service. Co. I am really excited for what's to come. Excited to visit again, and learn more about the different initiatives that are happening at your school, and how you continue to work towards these

Scott Jamieson (he/him): positive impacts in a lot of these different areas. So thank you so much for being such fabulous guests on the podcast it was so great to connect to you again and share your story with our listeners.

Sento: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Scott Jamieson (he/him): You guys were awesome.

Sento: Yeah. Bye. 5.

Sento: Hey?