When Lily Carter joined the Global Leadership Academy in 2024, she arrived with a mission: to transform her own experiences with bullying into something that could prevent this from happening to others. However, she didn’t yet know how, or even if, this was possible.
After gaining skills and confidence, and with guidance from her coaches, she realized this mission with the development of her Dream Project (a youth-led service project developed during our programs), Lily’s Empathy Explorers. She has since implemented it with amazing success in her home community, and is currently expanding its impact as a registered non-profit organisation.
We asked Lily about her experience developing and implementing her Dream Project, and are excited to share her story with you.
What Is Lily’s Empathy Explorers?
The project Lily ultimately developed at the Global Leadership Academy, Lily’s Empathy Explorers, is an interactive card game and learning program designed to teach children the importance of empathy and kindness to reduce bullying.
Lily implemented her project at a local elementary school, running two sessions a week until she had reached every sixth-grade class. Using situation and reaction cards, guided discussion questions, and pre- and post-session surveys, the data she collected showed that empathy can indeed be nurtured and that young people can learn to better understand and respond to the emotions of others.
“Empathy Explorers is my way of turning the pain others inflicted on me into nourishment for society,” Lily explains. “I hope to protect the next student from suffering the way I have, and also protect children from becoming bullies so they can become secure and content individuals.”
Lily’s “Why”
Lily’s inspiration and motivation – her ‘why’, as we say at the Global Leadership Academy – came from deeply personal experiences with bullying. Despite being treated unkindly by peers and even some adults, she maintained her integrity and constant commitment to never retaliating. Now, she wanted to focus on preventing other young people from experiencing this same situation. “The importance of empathy became overwhelming to me.”
This project also became a way to reclaim her voice and a way to heal: “Leading the sessions became a great escape for me and a productive solution to the pain I had experienced.”
The Value of Perseverance
Creating Empathy Explorers required courage and perseverance. Even while balancing her own well-being, Lily volunteered extra hours to run the program, including during times when school life was difficult. “Initially, I thought my mind simply could not take on this challenge,” she reflects. “Though it was not easy or consequence-free, I knew it was the most impactful way of creating change.”
At the Global Leadership Academy, participants are guided and supported to develop a Dream Project that is inextricably linked to their experiences, values, passions, and skills… something only they could accomplish. Lily realized the power of this only later on, as she struggled: “The meaning I held behind Lily’s Empathy Explorers, along with the support I received, were the sole reasons I completed my goal.”
Ultimately, this perseverance paid off. The sessions became safe spaces for students to share stories, reconcile conflicts, and connect. One student even left a note in Lily’s bag, thanking her for changing their life – a moment Lily says she’ll never forget.
Lily’s Leadership Journey
Lily credits her time at the Global Leadership Academy with transforming how she sees leadership. “Before GLA, I thought leadership meant age, experience, or power,” she says. “Through discussions with my coaches at GLA, I realized it’s really about integrity and care for bettering the world.”
She talks about how an activity on the first day of the Global Leadership Academy program about what defines a leader changed her perspective, giving her the conviction and aspiration to believe she could in fact make change. She also notes how the support and encouragement from her home group coaches gave her the confidence to believe her story and passion could be transformed into action. Her conviction and confidence became the foundation as she developed, planned, and presented Empathy Explorers during the two-week program.
Since completing her initial goals set during the program, Lily has seen her message spread far beyond her classroom. Her work caught the attention of her local school board, who featured her in a district-wide article. Lily was also invited to tell her story and share her project at a community service organization’s annual conference, after which members raised over $6000 for Lily’s non-profit and her goals of expanding beyond her own community.
But for Lily, the greatest reward isn’t recognition – it’s knowing her project sparked real emotional growth in others, and in how this project has helped her heal: “This recognition and the tremendous progress I witnessed first-hand with the students were hugely impactful for my healing.”
Advice From Lily
For young people dreaming of leading change but feeling intimidated, Lily offers this advice:
“Everyone has something they wish they could undo or heal from. While you can’t always erase the pain, you can transform it into something that saves others. Think of the change you needed to see and become it. Big or small, your actions matter.”
Lily truly embodies the vision of the Global Leadership Academy: to build a global community of powerful youth, passionate about service, and equipped with the tools to create profoundly positive global change.
Ready to create your own change? Apply now to attend Global Leadership Academy.
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Using the power of experience-based learning, Powerful Youth is an award winning social enterprise dedicated to providing the best leadership training for youth world wide, helping them uncover purpose, fueled by their passions, to create positive and lasting change in themselves and their communities.
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