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From our National Director Page 2 ESPRIT Follow us on Facebook www.facebook.comusyoungmarines and our national homepage www.youngmarines.com With some luck from Mother Nature winter will be behind us soon and we can look forward to that time of the sea- son when we begin to focus on a couple of very key events Summer Programs of Adventures Challenges Encamp- ments and Schools SPACES and the Adult Leaders Conference ALC. Most of you will have already applied for one of our activities and the jury is still out on the sign-ups for ALC. Those of you who plan to attend a SPACES activity I know you will have fun and will be looking forward to sharing your experi- ences with others. Our new activity the National Outdoor Leadership School NOLS sounds like a lot of fun. We will be looking for feedback from you to tell us all about it. And as always I am looking forward to this years ALC for a variety of reasons not the least of which is meeting our first-time attendees and introducing all of our award winners for the year. But I am really excited to get our National Leadership Academy started at Camp Rilea in Oregon State. The reason Im excited about it is because this years Young Marine Leadership Symposium was all about establishing a course cur- riculum that we can all be proud of and will want to take back to your units. The process began immediately following last years academy and for good reason our academy was broken and needed to be fixed. I feel we are on the right path and ready to showcase our new plan. Eighteen of our senior Young Marines converged on the Nations Capital to hammer out a series of recommenda- tions to enhance our academy. This included topics for the classroom more close order drill round-table discussion a new LEF and workbooks that are look- ing very very promising. This has truly been a team effort and the results will reflect on the hard work by all parties concerned. In fact I think the word is out because all three schools are full and I think this is a first. There is a valuable lesson to be taken away from this effort and the first is to recognize when a plan has gone awry and needs some attention. The second is to get input from those responsible for putting a plan together and in this case it is with your senior Young Marine leadership. Beginning with YM SgtMajor Blake Deweeses guidance teams were assigned and basic requirements clearly understood. From there they actually took an extra day to capture the essence of their hard work and then prepare a brief to the national staff and division commanders. From there it was a matter of putting their ideas into a plan that was executable and understood by all. We are putting the final touches on the project and from what I am able to see you will be impressed by the hard work and end result. A point to all of this is that I have said repeated that this is a program for and by our Young Marines. The task of re-writing the course curric- ulum for the Academy is a clear example of the role our Young Marines play in our organization. Well done to all of you. Now all we have to do is pull it off.