Four Sanford High School students traveled to Camden Maine for the 38th Annual Camden Conference

By Amber Ouellette, Staff Writer

Sanford, MAINE – From Feb. 21 to 23, four students from Sanford High School traveled to Camden, ME for the 38th annual Camden Conference. 

Ax Courtney, Rebecca Horton, Taiga Poppas and Lydia Treadwell chose to spend the last three days of February vacation enjoying intriguing and thought provoking speeches from experts.

Kelly Jewell, both the supervising teacher and an enjoyer of the conference, organized with the conference’s educational program to bring students up to the Camden Opera House, Rockland and Falmouth for free every year.

This year’s conference topic was Democracy Under Threat: A Global Perspective. There were eight session speakers, a keynote speaker and a moderator. The keynote speaker, Maria Ressa, gave a speech about her experience with democracy in the Philippines. 

Ressa is a journalist from Manila, and she is a co-founder of the Rappler, a media outlet based in her country. The Philippines is a country whose democracy was once in danger of an autocratic leader. Maria was able to give insight on how democracy can prevail, and come out stronger than it was before. Other speakers included experts from England, Venezuela, Poland and Hungary.

Eleven other high schools and several colleges also take advantage of the Camden Conference education program. The Opera House, which seats almost 500 people, was almost full. These students were given opportunities during the conference to ask questions about the presentations they were watching. 

When asked about the weekend, Jewel said “The thought-provoking weekend left the students and their teacher dazzled by the subject matter and curious about the paths our global political world will head to next.”

Next year’s conference theme is ‘Power, Politics and Players in Today’s Middle East.’ If you are interested. You can visit www.camdenconference.org, or talk to Mrs. Jewell in B142.