Cavelero’s ASB President hops a plane to Harvard

BY PAM STEVENS | EDITOR Mackenzie Simon joins others to enhance leadership skills If you met Mackenzie Simon, you would see a laid-back kid with a contagious grin but when you start talking to him, you realize that he is a kid who has huge goals and ambitions and is willing to work hard to achieve those goals.

After spending some time with students from his eighth grade class at Cavelero Mid-High in Washington D.C. and New York last year, Simon decided he wanted another traveling adventure this summer so he joined People to People at a leadership summit in Boston where he got to stay in the Shaw Dorms on the Harvard University campus.

“I went to Harvard to help my leadership skills and for the experience,” Simon said. “It will make me a lot more confident and help me with my leadership abilities and to help other people around me.”

Students from around the world came to the Summit, only three were actually from the State of Washington.

“Most of the kids were my age or older and from all around the world,” he said. “Beijing, Spain, Paraguay and Italy. Some were from countries I haven’t ever heard of.”

The students earn high school credit and they also perform 10 hours of community service.

This year’s students took part in an event for Lupus and Leukemia.
“We helped pass out flyers for the awareness of Lupus and Leukemia,” Simon said. “In Boston, they had a big walk while we were there.”

The future leaders were also asked to come up with an action plan that could help their community. Simon had a few ideas including collecting “Nets for Lives”, which asks community members to donate mosquito nets to send to countries with a high risk of malaria.

He also would like to collect supplies for troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I also thought of collecting sports drinks for people serving in the armed forces,” he said. “Hopefully I can have a drive at school.”

Boston was one of the places Simon was really hoping to go, in hopes of not only visiting Harvard but also MIT and scope out both of the schools to see if that is where he might want to go to college.

“I’m big into technology, kind of a geek,” he said. “MIT is the number one college to do with technology and science and I might want to go into the path of a medical career, so I might as well see Harvard too.”
The whole experience was a great one for Simon and he hopes to someday be a foreign exchange student.

“I’m planning on becoming an exchange student, I just have one more year of Spanish,” he said.

“He had such a great time and he came home very motivated,” mom Teresa Simon said. “I think it would be worthwhile to do it again.”

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