NCR Celebrates Deloitte IMPACT Day at Largo High
In the National Capital Region, ten Deloitte employees spent IMPACT Day leading a workshop on Creating Effective Leaders for a group of 30 11^th grade students from College Summit-NCR partner, Largo High School. These students will attend a College Summit Workshop this summer and return to their school in the fall as Peer Leaders, responsible for leading and promoting college-going culture.

On June 5^th Deloitte, LLP celebrated IMPACT Day, a day each year when Deloitte employees around the world leave their desks and go into their communities to support non-profits and to share their knowledge and expertise.

In the National Capital Region, ten Deloitte employees spent IMPACT Day leading a workshop on Creating Effective Leaders for a group of 30 11^th grade students from College Summit-NCR partner, Largo High School. These students will attend a College Summit Workshop this summer and return to their school in the fall as Peer Leaders, responsible for leading and promoting college-going culture. The group of Deloitte employees was led by James Luna and included Dave Scott, Josiah Jackson, Hugh Shepherd, Louay Youssef, Ashish Francis, Nancy Reid, Jessica Skinner, Eric Goldfarb, and Darcine Mason, a 2000 alumna of Largo High School.

Through discussions and exercises focused on trust, teamwork and leadership, these future Peer Leaders were able to learn about their own leadership styles and how to most effectively work as team leaders and team members. A group of ten current Largo Peer Leaders joined the group to not only share their experiences leading college-going culture in the school, but also to provide words of encouragement and a challenge to the future Peer Leaders to exceed their accomplishments. These 2008-2009 Peer Leaders succeeded in bringing Largo's college acceptance rate up to 80%, and helped Largo win the 2008-2009 Deloitte Award for Creating College-Going Culture. They challenged the future Peer Leaders to bring the college acceptance rate up to 100% and to use the $3,000 Deloitte prize in the most effective way to do so.

At the end of the day the students identified ten problem areas at Largo High where they would like to see change, and came up with bold ideas for how to create that change. The Deloitte team then gave this group of students an additional challenge- choose one of the problems and, as a group, make the change happen in the 2009-2010 school year. The students chose Largo's poor image in the community as the area where they could make the most difference. They will spend 2009-2010 not only being catalysts for change in their school, but also making sure that their educators, peers, families, and community members know about and acknowledge the great things happening at Largo High School.

This IMPACT Day was not only about the impact the Deloitte team was making in these students' lives, it was also about the positive impact these future Peer Leaders can and will make in their own communities. It is a lesson that they will carry with them for a lifetime.