The Hispanic American Leadership Regional Conference met this past weekend at MU with more than 100 students attending from schools across Missouri and Kansas.
According to the HALO Conference website, the goal of the conference is to give students the opportunity to learn new skills that will not only improve their leadership skills but also benefit their organization.
This conference is held annually, and the location is voted on at the prior year’s conference.
The conference consisted of workshops throughout the day with three different options for each time slot. Each workshop dealt with one of the three main themes: personal, professional and organization development.
MU HALO President Liz Reed said one of the main goals of this year was to give participants choices in what workshops to attend.
Reed said the one thing she took away from the conference was during Carlos Gomez’s speech. Gomez is the president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City and was the conference’s keynote speaker.
“Carlos Gomez said a lot of great things,” Reed said. “You can’t sit around and expect changes without getting personally invested. You need to volunteer and meet people who have an influence in those changes.”
MU HALO Secretary Beba Williams also said Gomez’s speech made an impact on her experience at the conference.
“He was saying that as a minority, not just in society but in a college environment, there are going to be lots of challenges faced against us and we shouldn’t give up on whatever we are fighting for,” Williams said. “We should keep going and keep working hard for what we’re doing.”
Along with the workshops and keynote speaker, this year’s conference included a banquet the night before the conference began.
Reed said the banquet broke the ice between all the schools and allowed the conference to run smoother, because students were already familiar with one another.
MU HALO Vice President Ana Guitierrez said this conference is important to Hispanic students in this region, because the Hispanic community throughout Missouri and Kansas is so small.
“It’s really good to know there are people going through the same experience as you,” Guitierrez said. “It’s also good because we are able to put together our voices as one big organization and have a bigger impact on the community.”
Williams said this conference is important to Hispanic college students, because it allows students to see the growing Hispanic community in college campuses.
“It’s about being together and showing the Hispanics in Missouri and Kansas that there are a great number of us,” Williams said. “There are more of us than we think. It’s good to know that we aren’t just the only HALO in this region. We have other people we can rely on.”
