The Women’s Quarterly Leadership Summit and ROAR received the Promising Practices award and will be recognized on Oct. 14 at the National Forum on Character Education in Washington D.C.

Character.org awarded 327 Promising Practices to school districts and youth-service organizations from across the U.S, Canada, China, Columbia, and Mexico.

“What they do is they identify schools of character in the country. They have an 11 principle scale,” said Amanda Cardenas adviser of ROAR and Women’s Quarterly Leadership Summit.

The 11 principle scale is a set list of rules that serve as a grading rubric for judges to critique on the school climate.

Schools who applied for the award submitted an application two months ago.

“Schools would win the award since they met all of the examples of a good school climate. There are schools that have three or four examples really good examples of 11 of those principles,” Cardenas said.

Cardenas is proud of winning the award.

“It is thrilling. It is very exciting. I am proud of our students and our staff because both programs are run by a staff of 10-12 adults on either side and are attended by hundreds of students each month. These programs would not exist if it wasn’t for this group of people that we have at our school,” Cardenas said.

Despite her confidence in the school, Cardenas was still uncertain about entering the competition.

“I am confident about our programs. I was unsure of the competition and what was out there (when I submitted the application). I was more uncertain when I applied,” Cardenas said.

Cardenas has seen other schools win the award and thought about entering the competition.

“I have attended the conference before for CEP and I watched other schools win this award and I remember sitting in their saying someday we are going to win that award,” Cardenas said.