Jacob Kim

My name is Jacob Kim, and I am the president of New Hope Echoes. I will become a junior at Cypress High School this year. I became the president of the program this year, and my job was to manage technology and help set up electronics and devices for concerts. Specifically, I help keep the presentations in check and running smoothly and solve technical problems with emails. Being the president of this program is and will always be a fascinating part of my life. Before I begin to describe my experiences in New Hope Echoes, a few personal, exciting things about me are that I mainly work with various 3D modeling software and music/audio engines. I am primarily self-taught and spend most of my free time away from academics, mainly working with audio. Most of my creative talent is in creating online digital media. My goals for the New Hope Echoes program are to see this program grow and spread awareness for those in need through the concerts. In the future, I hope to see New Hope Echoes grow with many new participants and new fundraising goals that will help change the world, and I will do my best to contribute as much as I can to see this overall goal be met. I have supported these goals since I was young, during the second New Hope Echoes concert in 2014. I have participated in concerts #2 through #18. Ever since I have done my best to put together presentations and music performances to help support the cause of the concerts. Presentations for New Hope Echoes are significant; they are the central part of the concert that raises awareness for people in need across the world, and they assist in helping fund global restoration projects and large global organizations to make the world a better place. New Hope Echoes taught me many valuable life lessons, and if you also join NHE, you will also learn critical and crucial life skills like mine. One of these lessons that I learned was how to be a leader. As the program's vice president, I must be a leader and help guide participants and the program itself. I have learned that being a leader takes time, effort, and resilience when problems arise. By performing during concerts, participants are already setting themselves up to be leaders because they present their research and solutions to problems to multiple people. They act, work to solve problems, and persuade others to solve them. Another skill I learned as a participant in New Hope Echoes concerts is creating professional slideshows and giving speeches in front of audiences. Creating slideshows is like doing research for essays or projects, and it helps build on other essential skills, such as your ability to explain your research and cite sources. Giving speeches and presentations are both fundamental skills to have as well, seeing as academics require those skills.