The Columbia Star business editor leads Future Leaders
By Jackie Perrone jacper@juno.com

John Temple Ligon points to the project his class of Future Leaders at Edventure created. With him is Nikki Manning, director of early education and outreach at EdVenture.

Maybe Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams sat down one day to chat, and one of them said something like, "Hey, let's design a nation."

Today, in the Midlands, some middle schoolers can be involved in exactly that same undertaking. Temple Ligon,

business editor of The Columbia

Star, leads a program at EdVenture called Future Leaders. Their first project is to start a country from scratch.

Future Leaders, an after- school program is made possible by grants from the Knight Foundation and Richland School District One.

Future Leaders' goal is to transform the energy and drive that propel disadvantaged children down destructive paths. The program has been successful.

Middle schoolers showing signs of risky directions are recommended for this after- school program, Tuesdays and Thursdays at EdVenture, for a semester. They find themselves plunged into politics upon arrival.They will design, organize, and govern a new country.

Their new nation has to be set up with checks and balances and plenty of politics, with speeches, voting, and laws. When elections are concluded, there's a president for this land, and he appoints a cabinet. A national anthem, a flag, even a national dance, must be created by the electors. As a result, rebellious boys and girls work together in teams to get their country under way.

Ligon's background in architecture and community involvement helps students in lay out a capital city for the new land. Architecture and city planning boils down to streets, buildings, water and sewer systems, everything it takes to make a metropolis.

Ligon tapped the civic spirit of Columbia firm Wilbur Smith and the John Holder Development Company of Atlanta to raise $5,000 for a trip to Atlanta. On a chartered bus, he and EdVenture staff took their young charges to this bigger city, visiting the High Museum, the Opera House, and Centennial Park. The two companies provided a high point for the day by hosting lunch in the elegant dining room on the 73rd floor of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel.

"This is city planning in the Real World," says Ligon. "The students see what ideas on paper can become."

This innovative approach to creativity won a special award from the Friends of Richland One for Temple Ligon.