Today was our last full day of MBV, and we have so much to reflect on. Our theme was ‘Empowerment Day,’ and we needed it as we headed into Business Plan presentations! Thank you to our sponsor, the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation.
The topic of our opening keynote was ‘Make a Difference,’ and we heard from the University of St. Thomas’s Amanda ‘Cash’ Cashman. Cash gave a funny, heartwarming, and motivational message about the importance of investing in your passion, leading with kindness, and using our skills to help others. She also helped us celebrate our many talents as we put on a mini talent show during the keynote. We have some seriously talented campers here (not that we didn’t already know that)!
After the keynote, we got to choose between Health/Wellness breakouts and a networking activity. In the breakouts, we learned about Resilience, Staying Organized, Persevering Over Challenges, and Teamwork. Thank you to our speakers from the University of Minnesota, Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, The Luxury Shrink, and Youthprise! At the networking activity, we got to learn about and practice elevator pitches. Not only did we practice the elevator pitch for our company products, but we also got to make one for ourselves. It was a great activity to follow the opening keynote where we started to think about our skills and how we can put them to action.
After lunch, we made the final preparations with our company and went into the much-anticipated business plan presentations. We had so many great judges listen to our proposals, give great feedback and insight, and (hopefully) approve our plan – thank you to all of our volunteers! It was fun watching the collective relief spread as we all walked out of our presentation rooms. After a few long nights preparing, it was fun to see it all put together.
After a nerve-wrecking afternoon, we got to have some fun with our second keynote of the day, ‘Dreams to Action,’ from Harry Waters, Jr. Harry is a director, actor, and educator who told us to live in the moment, find happiness in a dark world, and put our dreams out into the world so that we can act on them. If we say, write, declare our dreams, it makes it seem much more real and likely to pursue. Harry had a lot of great advice for students, but his reprisal of ‘Earth Angel’ from Back to the Future (in which he played Marvin Berry) brought down the house. We made MBV history receiving such a spectacular serenade!
We’re getting ready to have a fun-filled last night at camp by having a dance and other activities. It will be a bittersweet night as it feels like camp only just started. It’s been so much fun sharing MBV news in this blog – thank you to all who have supported us and cheered us on through this adventure! Stay tuned because another week of MBV begins July 24th at St. John’s University!