Teenagers are often thought of as a self-indulgent group. One organization has been working for almost 60 years to change that. The 2016 Pennsylvania West Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Seminar (HOBY) took place for 3 days from June 10-12 at Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA. Each year Tyrone Area High School selects one student to attend. This year the Tyrone Ambassador was Morgan Bridges.

The curriculum for this Leadership Seminar was based on HOBY’s vision to motivate and empower individuals to make a positive difference within the global society. HOBY’s mission is to inspire students to volunteer and to positively impact their communities.

“Outstanding!” says Bridges when asked about her weekend at HOBY. “I didn’t know how I would feel about going to a college campus for three days with strangers, but at the end of the weekend I didn’t want to leave.”

The seminar included a service project with a domestic abuse shelter. “That was my favorite part. We were able to get out into the community and volunteer,” said Bridges.

All ambassadors are sent back to their own home communities with a challenge to complete a total of 100 volunteer hours in the year immediately following the seminar. “I have so many places I want to volunteer for,” Bridges said, “the hard part is narrowing down my list. I know I want to work with children. Working with the domestic abuse shelter really gave me another option that I never considered before.”

In the summer of 1958, Hugh O’Brian received an invitation that would change his life. At the time he had already made a name for himself as an actor portraying the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp on television and appearing in numerous films. When he received an invite from Dr. Albert Schweitzer welcoming him to French Equatorial Africa for a visit to a remote hospital complex, he did not hesitate to accept. After an inspiring nine days, Dr. Schweitzer took Hugh’s hand and said, “Hugh, what are you going to do with it?”

Two weeks later, O’Brian put together the first of what would become the Youth Seminars in Los Angeles. Five decades later, HOBY is still inspiring young people all over the world to develop their leadership and critical thinking skills to achieve their highest potential.

Bridges became one of 450,000 to become a HOBY alumni and she hopes to return to pass the torch on to others. “We have an opportunity to come back and volunteer as a Junior Facilitator for future seminars,” Bridges said, “I hope to come back and inspire others as I have been inspired.”