Jen Schaper is a student who wants to assure you that the negative image some people have about John Barsby Secondary School is a stereotype that should have been left behind years ago.

"I've visited a lot of schools over the years," she told me, "and I've found that Barsby students are more welcoming and nicer than students in any other school and I've had lots of substitute teachers tell me the same thing."

I totally agree, Barsby students stand out in the crowd but as regular readers of this column know, I believe that on the whole today's generation of students leave the students of my generation in the dust. That's why I've decided that once again it's time for me to write a short series of columns to introduce you to just a few of today's teenagers starting with Jen Schaper.

There's no doubt that Jen is a leader but there are hundreds of student leaders in our Mid Island high schools and there are thousands of "doers". Students who catch the visions expressed by the various leaders and enthusiastically turn them into action.

One of the ways today's students stand out is with their time management skills. Hundreds of them take on an amazing load of extra curricular activities and still manage to get good marks.

Jen for instance is on the Principal's list, a straight "A" student. For most students in my generation that would have been a fulltime job but let me tell you what Jen is up to when she is not studying.

First she is an enthusiastic youth leader in her church where she supervises 75 to 100 teenagers once a week. She's a member of the student council and has been every year since Grade 8. The school Theatre Club takes a lot of her time (about 130 hours over the past two months alone) and yet she also finds time to act with the Nanaimo Theatre Group. She's been one of the leaders that organized Barsby's Thirty Hour Famine and Make Poverty History fundraising events while also fundraising for a student trip to build a house for a needy family in Mexico - She leaves for the airport at 2 am this coming Saturday.

But her biggest commitment of all is to organize, with the help of many other extraordinary students, the Community Hoedown to be held on June 2 from 5 to 8 pm. The ticket price will be $5 per person or $15 for a family of four and what an event it's going to be with the proceeds to be split between Free the Children, a Third World education project, and the Malawi Africa Project being organized by Carl Danielson, a Nanaimo student nurse who will be returning to a village where he volunteered a year or so ago and taking medical supplies with him.

"When I fall asleep," Jen smiled, "I'm dreaming about the Community Hoedown and when I wake up, that's what I'm thinking about."

This is going to be an amazing event with everything from a mechanical bull, to children's games and prizes, to a dunk tank, Sumo wrestling in those inflated suits, excellent food, a real fire truck for kids to explore, and dozens of other exciting things to do for the whole family.

Do yourself a favour on June 2, go have a great time and help Jen and the other Barsby students support these two extremely worthy causes.

And if you want to check out Jen and the Barsby Theatre Club on stage, go to see Waiting for the Parade, a play about five women on the Home Front during the Second World War. The show starts at 7:30 and tickets are $5 at the door.