U-46 honors more good Samaritan students
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Elgin High School senior Abe Lopez, who received a distinguished President's Volunteer Award for bringing Pay it Forward tours to school.
Now, two more U-46 students have been added to the exemplary service roster. Bianca Favia and Bolatito Soetan, both South Elgin High School students, were also named President's Volunteer Award winners.
Bianca, a junior who lives in Bartlett, went on a mission trip to Nicaragua to work at an orphanage, install a water line to a small village and deliver food to a refugee community of people who were displaced ten years ago by Hurricane Mitch.
She said the most difficult part of the trip was visiting that refugee community with 500 children, where was only enough food to feed 100 of the children. Watching the kids who were fenced off from eating was "the saddest, most desperate thing I had ever seen," she said.
Bianca pledges to return, raising money to bring more aid to the children she met in orphanages in Nicaragua.
Bolatito, a senior and South Elgin resident, was recognized for her volunteer efforts to help a neighbor in need. Her neighbor had been left a widow after a tragic car accident. She was going to have to cut back on her job as a night shift nursing assistant to care for her daughter and mother, which meant the neighbor may not have been able to afford her home.
Bolatito learned how to care for the neighbor's elderly mother, who had suffered a stroke, and assist the young daughter with homework. Staying overnight allowed her neighbor to keep her night shift job, which paid more than the day shifts.
It also helped Bolatito decide that she wants to pursue a nursing career.
ECC school funding forum: Students not yet old enough to vote might not feel like they can have any impact on government. An Elgin Youth Leadership Academy program this Saturday will help counter this notion.
The Leadership Academy will have a community forum, "Education Funding in Illinois," at 9 a.m. in the Alumni Room at Elgin Community College, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin.
At the Leadership Academy, students participate from seventh grade through their senior year in high school. Each year focuses on a different aspect of leadership development.
High school juniors in the program have a focus on civic engagement and social justice this year, learning why -- in Illinois -- the achievement gap between students growing up in lower-income areas, and their more affluent peers, is one of the largest in the nation.
Saturday, 11th-grade program participants have the chance to show off their knowledge, and to ask state Sen. Michael Noland, and state Reps. Ruth Munson, Fred Crespo and Tim Schmitz questions about the achievement-gap inequities in state funding.
It's free and open to the public; come watch a very novel kind of debate.
Teacher to get "creamed": Today, Einstein Academy students get a crack at something most of us only dream of. As part of their annual Pi Day, celebrating Albert Einstein's birthday as well as the calendar date that celebrates this mathematical symbol (that means the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), students will pelt first-grade teacher and coach Jason Smith with pies at 1:45 p.m.
Let 'em rip!