MADISON – Madison City Schools recently had the honor to have four seniors participate in the International Virtual Youth Leadership Summit for Peace.

Cameron Cummings and Leah Lessmann from Bob Jones High School participated in one summit on Sept. 21 while James Clemens High School seniors Quincy Bowie and Sarah Bierbauer participated in the Sept. 30 summit. These Madison students represented the state of Alabama for the summit.

Bonstingl Leadership Development Worldwide sponsored the event; this company specializes in strategies for education and business organizations to boost achievement and create new growth opportunities. Peace Education Network-Nepal or PENN was co-sponsor.

“The goal/objective of the summit was to come up with ways we could spread peace throughout the country and ways we could make a difference,” Lessmann said. Nineteen students participated in the summit. The participating students live in 10 different countries.

In one of his weekly email updates, MCS Superintendent Dr. Ed Nichols said these students had the opportunity to interact with leaders and students from across the globe. The organizer of this summit said the Madison City students “were by far our most impressive student leaders” and that they are “self-starters who take charge when the occasion merits.”

“Congratulations to these students, their parents and MCS teachers and staff who have helped lay the foundation for all of our students to excel on a global scale,” Nichols said.

For 2021, the event was held virtually with Zoom on International Peace Day on Sept. 21.

“We met over Zoom for 2.5 hours,” Lessmann said. “During that time, we were split into breakout rooms and shared our project ideas of how we could create an environment more peaceable and fairer for everyone.”

Lessmann suggested the idea of “doing yoga in-person or online one morning to get our minds ready for the day and to put our minds at ease and peace. Cameron Cummings and I are both Bob Jones students and held the event in-person, while also having a Zoom call that others could join.”

“I learned the things good leaders do and how to apply these traits to everyday activities. I have a greater understanding of peace and how to experience it within myself and others,” she said.

“Coming up with a project and working on it with people from around the world has truly been a once in a life time opportunity that I am so grateful to have experienced,” Lessmann said.