Camp offers students chance to lead, create & change

MANILA, Philippines - For some students, staying in school is the biggest challenge in their lives. For these underserved students who come from low-income households, it is their smart, creativity and sheer determination that help them get by. Recognizing the immense potential of these young leaders could give them the chance to change their lives and communities.

Helping these youth leaders cross the socio-economic barriers can enable them to take a confident leap forward to bring change where it is needed most. Asiawide Refreshments Corporation (ARC), the licensed bottler of RC Cola products in the Philippines, knows it is not an easy trick to sustain the drive for the disadvantaged youth. Owing to its corporate responsibility towards the community, ARC knows that inspiring and nurturing students who otherwise cannot afford the experience could be the building block for promoting positive change and making an impact on their lives.

To bridge that gap, ARC brings together some of the most underserved but deserving youth delegates in a three-day leadership camp dubbed “The ARC Young Leaders Camp.” Using the power of lectures and play, 40 youth leaders will get to hone their practical leadership skills to enable them to become more effective agents of change. Panel discussions, workshops and outdoor activities will help today’s youth reflect, explore, share, learn and develop their techniques, improving their social, personality and leadership abilities.

Students will get to be active campers, using learnings from the first two days to create a project proposal that will benefit their communities through the “Hakbang Kabataan.” There will also be a social enterprise activity wherein participants will make use of scrap materials for something functional. The said activity is aimed at launching young people into becoming catalysts of change for the environment or tackling an important society issue.

With three days off from the students’ grueling day-to-day regimen of exams and reports, youth delegates will not leave the camp empty-handed. Leveraging on the core values of ARC, the camp can serve as a springboard for these students’ dreams — making them realize their potentials, establish a vision for their future, and to mold them into the kind of leaders the community, and the country at large needs.