Looking Back on the 2013 Student Ambassador Summit

Hey everybody, it’s Tiger! I wanted to leave y’all with a summary of the 2013 Student Ambassador Summit as a whole, so you know how much fun and how great this event is!

July 10^th: Wednesday night, we all got in town and had our pre-Summit meetings. Later on that night, we split into our groups that we would be in for the rest of the week! (It was such an amazing group of Ambassadors this year, by the way. I would have been honored to have any of them on my team!) We started our first round table of the week with Youth Council member, Hunter, doing a trivia game to test the Ambassadors’ knowledge on physical activity, healthy eating, and general health! After trivia, we headed to dinner and had our opening ceremonies. Lots of speakers took the stage to welcome the Ambassadors, including staff members from SUDIA (the local dairy council in Charlotte), actual dairy farmers, and a few words of advice from our Youth Council and Alumni Ambassadors!

July 11^th: Starting off the day bright and early at 7 AM, the 30 minute walk to the stadium included an epic dance party! Once arriving at Panther Stadium, the Ambassadors, Program Advisors and staff proceeded to “Fuel Up” their bodies for the 14 hour day ahead of them! After breakfast, 127 local Student Ambassadors proceeded to fill the room as they got ready to take part in the local Summit run by the Youth Council and Alumni Ambassadors! After the local Summit, the National and State Ambassadors headed back upstairs to the Panthers Den to get learning! Staff handed out a paper which was to be completed called the Student Action Plan. Students got to work immediately! This paper is designed to help students organize their thoughts and set goals for this upcoming school year! When I tell you that these students were dialed in and focused, I mean it. People talk about seeing someone’s “wheels turning” when they’re thinking hard. I saw that. The students were about as focused as I’ve ever seen a person. They were ready. They were all so pumped when they finished their plans because they feel like it’s all written out for them now! Which is true because they wrote it out themselves! I can’t wait to see what these Ambassadors do this school year because each and every one of them are determined as anything, and I know they have it in them to be the change!

July 12^th: Once again, we start another morning with dancing all the way to the stadium from the hotel! After arriving at the stadium, we proceeded to “Fuel” our bodies for the amazing day ahead! We started off the day by hearing from the GENYOUth Foundation. Now when I say the GENYOUth Foundation I mean everybody! From the “Fab 5” Adventure Capital winners, to Zak Malamed & Marvin Matthews from the Inspiration Panel, and even a special treat getting to hear a speech from GENYOUth’s CEO, Alexis Glick! After the opening ceremonies for the day were done, we broke into two groups. One group went to a storytelling session with Zak and Marvin, helping us to better communicate our own personal stories to other people and help us Ambassadors connect to the people we are talking to. The other group headed down to the Panthers Media Room where Mrs. Glick shared her many years of expertise in media and shared some amazing tips to help us whenever we’re being interviewed or interviewing somebody! We then all headed upstairs for lunch so we could power through the rest of our day! And boy oh boy, did we need to power through and be energetic! Because after lunch, we had the opportunity to run around and get active with not one, but two NFL players! Mr. Steve Smith, wide receiver for the Panthers and Mr. Luke Kuechly, linebacker for the Panthers! But wait—the fun doesn’t end there! After getting to hang out with these amazing NFL players, we all loaded up into charter buses and headed over to the US National White Water Center! Here, Ambassadors and Program Advisors had the choice between either white water rafting or a Ropes Course! After an hour and a half of either of these activities, everybody headed up to the main building where we had our Summit Celebration dinner. After a great healthy meal, lots of prizes were given out to everybody for various competitions throughout the week such as Trivia, Dance Competition, Make Your Own Meme, and lots of others! So after handing out prizes, Ambassadors, staff, and Program Advisors finished off the night by taking part in a group performance of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” telling us all exactly what Fuel Up to Play 60 is all about! Never stop believing. It always can happen. Never give up.

July 13^th: A group of smiley students walk downstairs to the lobby of the hotel where the last six hours of our Summit would take place! These were by far the most important hours too! In these few hours we learned how to use the School Wellness Investigation to collect data about our schools to help convince principals and business leaders to help make our schools healthy and more active places! We then moved on to learn all about school lunches and the great new things that are being implemented to public school lunches! Now, here comes the most important part of the Summit: The Fuel Up to Play 60 Declaration. Another round table discussion headed up by Youth Council member Tyler, this is definitely what the whole Summit led up to! We kicked out all the adults and it was just students. Ambassadors wrote a declaration letting other students know what we did at the Summit and what we plan to do with this amazing program. The declaration took about one hour to write and was the last thing we did at the Summit! Once done, all 67 Student Ambassadors signed it to make it official!

Well, guys, that’s this year’s Summit in a nutshell. I’m so honored I got to return this year as an alumnus and help lead and mentor the new Ambassadors! This event is so special to me and all the Ambassadors. What other event do you get to come together with a group of kids with the same passion as you to change the country and you brainstorm together and basically live together? Nothing that I’ve heard of! I love all of my friends that I met at the Summit like I do my own family! I’m not going to lie, I choked up a little seeing them head off to their planes last night! It was a little sad. They’re how many miles away from me? Hundreds? Thousands? I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that those who share a passion for something, will always end up back together somehow, whether it’s in 10 days or 10 years. I know the passion to be the change isn’t going to leave any of these kids anytime soon. And I can’t wait to grow up with them, and see how the youth of today is going to change tomorrow. To everyone I met here: You’re family. ‘Ohana forever. We’ll be back together soon. I can guarantee it. But until then. keep doing great things in your country. You’ve already made great strides and I can’t wait to see what you do and make some more of my own! Until then.

Yours In Health,
Tiger G.
Alumni Student Ambassador
Fuel Up to Play 60 Program