Reprint from the Progress Times - May 30, 2008
©Progress Times 2008 - All Rights Reserved

 

Leadership Mission 25th anniversary class to graduate

 

The Leadership Mission, Class XXV, will be holding their graduation dinner June 5 at Cimarron at 6:30. The graduation dinner will include announcing this year’s graduates as well as awarding this year’s Alumni of the Year award and Friend of Leadership Mission award. New board members will also be introduced for the 2008 – 2009 class.

After a quarter of a century, Leadership Mission remains a strong civic force in the city. The class meets every third Thursday of the month from September to May where they tour local businesses and municipal buildings as well as talk with city officials and leaders ranging from local FBI representatives to television news anchormen.

Leadership Mission founder J. D. Villarreal, believes the class has been the success it has because of the city’s attitude.

"In other communities where they’ve had a program like this, it hasn’t been the success it is here," said Villarreal. "I really think it’s because people are more engaged here."

Villarreal began Leadership Mission in 1983 when, as an employee of Mission Consolidated Independent School District (MCISD), he saw a need for a program that would make the most of the potential he saw in the young people of the district.

"I started to realize that there were a lot of young people in the community with a lot of potential, who had the capacity and ability to be in leadership positions but I didn’t see it happening," said Villarreal. "So I felt that we could initiate a program that would give them the foundation that would include knowledge of the community."

Villarreal says that he and the other founding members structured the curriculum such that it would coincide with the school calendar and made it a priority that the class participated in the community.

"From the very beginning we had a commitment to the community to participate," said Villarreal. "It started with a ‘civic night’. I got all the civic clubs to commit to being present so in lieu of a regular meeting they all came in. We had 200 to 250 people there. That’s where we presented the idea of Leadership Mission."

From that one gathering of civic clubs in Mission, the class was born. Now, 25 years later, Leadership Mission is run by a nine-member board made up of alumni. Each year new members are added as outgoing members of the board step down to keep the class from becoming stagnant.

Over the course of the last four years, Leadership Mission has added another dimension. Beginning with Class XXII, each Leadership Mission class now helms a class project wherein they raise money to fund a civic endeavor of some sort.

Three years ago, the first class to mount a class project raised $9,000 to purchase a street clock which was donated to the Mission Historical Museum. The project was selected after drawing from a 1900’s street clock located in front of the Gregg Wood residence on Doherty Avenue. The following year’s class made a $3,000 book donation to the Speer Memorial Library and the class immediately after made two gifts to the Mission Boys and Girls Club. The class purchased aluminum benches and 12 computer desks.

Current Leadership Mission president Omar de Leon believes the class can only get better.

"I see our organization continuing to improve in the areas such as increased leadership training opportunities by revamping the current class topics," said De Leon. "The board felt at times we were not providing enough of this to our class members. I envision the organization continuing to grow into a larger non-profit organization. We do the very best with our budget and the volunteered time from each board member that is doing this aside from their careers and family. There is not a better leadership program in the Valley that provides as much to our class members as we do in our program."

Villarreal agrees.

"People will come up to me and thank me for having the vision to get this started," said Villarreal. "The logo says vision, reason and courage which I believe is precisely what it takes to be a leader. Leadership is risky business.”