HOBY North Carolina seminars

HOBY North Carolina offers two seminars:
HOBY-NC East HOBY-NC East covering eastern and part of central NC, and
HOBY-NC West HOBY-NC West covering western and part of central NC.

Which county is covered by which seminar can vary from year to year. If you are a current high school Sophomore and are interested in attending HOBY in North Carolina, please contact your guidance counselor to apply.

HOBY History

The Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY) program was founded by Hugh O'Brian in 1958. That year, the actor most famous for his role as Hollywood's Wyatt Earp had the unique opportunity to spend nine inspirational days with the great humanitarian, Dr. Albert Schweitzer at Schweitzer's clinic in Africa.

There, Dr. Schweitzer impressed upon him that "the most important thing in education is to teach young people to think for themselves." This thought inspired Mr. O'Brian to create the first Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Seminar, which he founded two weeks after his return to Los Angeles. Throughout the years, the organization has grown and developed. And today, there are over 70 HOBY seminars held each year throughout the United States. For more information about the National Hoby organization, visit www.hoby.org.

North Carolina's first HOBY Leadership Seminar was held in 1979 by the Charlotte Jaycees at Belmont College. Fifty high school sophomores attended. By 1987, the HOBY-NC seminar had grown to over 200 Ambassadors. From 1988 through 2002, the Raleigh Jaycees ran a HOBY Seminar for Ambassadors from the Eastern half of the state and the Charlotte Jaycees ran the seminar for Ambassadors from the Western half of the state. From 2003 to 2009, the seminars were reunited again under a single HOBY-NC banner managed and staffed primarily by the Raleigh Jaycees. In 2010, Jaycees and HOBY alumni from all over North Carolina came together to launch HOBY-NC West in Winston-Salem. The Winston-Salem Jaycees have run NC West since 2011, while the Raleigh Jaycees continue to run their seminar, now NC East, in Raleigh.