Story by Carley Calabro

Leadership Southern Indiana was initially started 36 years ago with a leadership program for business leaders called Discover.

However, in 2015, LSI has created a program specifically for high school juniors titled Nexgen.

Nexgen is a five-day leadership program for high school juniors representing every high school in both Clark and Floyd County, as well as a school in Kentucky.

Nexgen LSI is a year-long program that starts with five days of students attending different businesses and companies. Each class is dedicated to one aspect of becoming a leader, as well as learning about the community.

“Nexgen was created in 2015 because LSI thought we would get our young leaders to learn more about our community while in high school,” said program coordinator Lisa Bottorff. “We were hopeful our youth would learn more about our community so they would realize how wonderful it is a so that they would want to live, work and play here after high school and/or college.”

While there, students learn about team building, diversity and financial literacy.  They tour various businesses and companies and learn about the economy and government. Along with the tours students will be given time to meet with business, community and government leaders.

In addition, students learn about the importance of philanthropy and choose a non-profit organization to give their time, talent and treasure to. To start the program off this year, First Savings Bank donated money to the charities students learned about.

For junior Ethan English, Nexgen has already taught him how to act in the real world.

“It has taught me to be a big time leader and philanthropist in the community,” English said. “I like the fact that we get to meet an abundance of unaccustomed young adults at contradistinctive schools around the area to come together and deposit time and money into southern Indiana.”

The Nexgen organization teaches students necessary aspects in order to become a successful leader. It not only helps young leaders today, but benefits more in the long run by giving life-long lessons for the future.