King Student Participates In International Peace Event

Instead of playing video games and wasting endless amounts of hours on the computer, King High School junior Justin “J.B.” Burroughs looked for more out of his summer vacation.

As an International Baccalaruate student with a 4.7 GPA, Burroughs was looking to spend his summer vacation doing something fun and also educational, so he can keep up on his studies while not going to school.

“I didn’t just want to go on vacation,” he said. “I wanted to learn something too.”

Burroughs has always had a passion for traveling. He got that passion from his dad, Rixie Burroughs, who was a missionary in Ecuador, where J.B was born. However, because of J.B.‘s commitments with the International Baccalurate Program and Marching Lions band, his time was limited, even in the summer.

“I could not travel to a lot of places so I thought “How awesome would that be if they could all come to me?”

Once he had an idea of what he wanted to do, he applied to become a People to People ambassador, and he was also going to attend an event that was being held over the summer. It would give him the opportunity to meet other students from around the world. 

However, after realizing how much the trip would cost, he and his dad decided it would not be possible attend because it was too expensive.

“We thought we were going to be able to have him get sponsored by local businesses, but People to People does not allow that anymore, they changed their policy on that,” his father said. “So that made it impossible to be able to come up with the money ourselves.”

A few days later though, they received an email with some good news, inviting J.B. to a similar event, The World Youth Peace Summit, which also features the World Scholar-Athlete games. This inaugural event was created by Dan Doyle, a former basketball player and writer. The event was created so that student athletes and artists could meet other students from other countries and participate in events that help them develop more into peace advocates. 

“The world scholar athlete games is kind of like a mini olympics for students,” he said. “It kind of forges bonds between everyone for the future and helps students learn more about peace, leadership, and cooperation with each other.”

After turning in the necessary forms and collecting the right amount of recommendation signatures from his teacher, Burroughs auditioned for a chance to participate in the event and found out within three days that he would be attending.

According to J.B.’s father, there were over 700 students that participated and J.B. was the only participant from the Tampa area.

For the World-Scholar Athlete games, Burroughs competed in percussion events by playing drums like he does for the King band. After the World Scholar Athlete games were over, he stayed in Connecticut to participate in the second half of the event, The World Youth Peace Summit.

Here, Burroughs participated in workshops, attended discussions, and listened to a few keynote speakers, including Colin Powell, who discussed ways that a younger generation can maintain peace within their own communities.

“It was really fun meeting with all of the people from different countries,” Burroughs said. “The whole event was created so that different nations could merge together and stop the stereotypes and it definitely helped me do that.”

Burroughs said he also learned a lot about leadership, which will help him as the treasurer of King High School's Student Government Association this year.

"Personally, I learned how to cooperate better with other people and I learned how to open my mind to others' ideas as a leader."