500 Young Leaders Attend ADL’s 8th Annual Youth Leadership Conference

  • December 10, 2014

On November 17th, over 500 participants came together at the University of Pennsylvania for ADL’s 8th Annual Youth Leadership Conference: Exploring Diversity, Challenging Hate, sponsored by Dr. Gabriel and Alma Elias. Student representatives and educators from 51 high schools across three states met for the largest Youth Leadership Conference yet. Hosted by No Place for Hate® and ADL’s A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute, the conference provided a forum for educators and students to discuss and action-plan ways to challenge bias in their schools.

Jacqueline Murekatete, an internationally recognized genocide prevention and human rights activist, opened the conference with a keynote address. Born in Rwanda in 1984, Jacqueline was nine years old when she lost her entire immediate and most of her extended family to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In her powerful presentation, she discussed how she connected with a Holocaust survivor and how they both used their voices to shine the light on bigotry and hate in the world. As one student commented, the keynote speaker was “awesome, inspiring, motivating, eye-opening.”

After the keynote, students and teachers attended morning workshops with professional ADL trainers to learn about identity, bias, and bullying in their own lives. Students said the morning workshop “was really awesome to meet other kids from different schools and hear about their experiences and how they’re similar and different.” In the afternoon, school groups met to develop an action-plan that would bring the lessons they learned from the conference back to their schools. One participant in the afternoon workshop remarked, “I think the afternoon workshop was best because we found things we can take back to our school.”

Thanks to the opportunities provided by ADL’s 8th Annual Youth Leadership Conference: Exploring Diversity, Challenging Hate, over 500 young leaders and educators now have the knowledge and skills to promote respect for diversity in their communities. “It was honestly breathtaking,” one student exclaimed. “I’m so glad I came.  This was really a good experience that touched me a lot.”

The Anti-Defamation League is one of the nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agencies fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defending democratic ideals and protecting civil rights for all.