Two Tennessee Youth Honored for Volunteerism at National Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C

Business Wire, May 7, 2007

Ten of the 102 were named America's top ten youth volunteers for 2007 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters today. These National Honorees received additional $5,000 awards, gold medallions, crystal trophies for the schools or organizations that nominated them, and $5,000 grants from The Prudential Foundation for charities of their choice.

The ten National Honorees are:

Taylor Bell, 18, of Little Rock, Ark., a junior at Pulaski Academy, who created Little Rock's first organized soccer league for special-needs children, engaging more than 100 kids who otherwise would have very limited opportunities to play team sports.

Kendall Ciesemier, 14, of Wheaton, Ill., an eighth-grader at Franklin Middle School, who formed a nonprofit organization that has raised $80,000 since 2004 through Web site donations and T-shirt sales to benefit AIDS orphans in Africa.

Kelly Davis, 18, of West Bath, Maine, a senior at Morse High School in Bath, who spearheaded the enactment of a state law allowing third-party nonprofit organizations to raise money for the police, and then raised more than $40,000 to purchase a bulletproof vest for every working police dog in Maine.

Anna DeSanctis, 13, of Houston, Texas, an eighth-grader at Holy Spirit Episcopal School, who raised more than $22,000 to create libraries at four orphanages in the region of China where she was born.

Bryce Pfeiffer, 14, of Raton, N.M., a member of the Colfax County 4-H and a home-schooled seventh-grader, who led a project to purchase and install a handicapped-accessible fishing dock on a lake at a local state park.

Robert Rasmussen, 14, of Hutchinson, Minn., a seventh-grader at Hutchinson Middle School, who made more than 600 cement markers to place at the graves of all U.S. veterans in a local cemetery, providing a permanent memorial to their sacrifice.

Mollie Singer, 18, of Las Vegas, Nev., a senior at Nevada State High School in Henderson, who has helped raise public support and more than $100,000 for diabetes research since she was diagnosed with the disease at age 4.

Jourdan Urbach, 15, of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., a home-schooled sophomore and a student at the Juilliard School's Pre-College Division in New York City, who has used his reputation and acclaimed abilities as a violinist to raise more than $1.3 million for national charities focused on neurological illnesses.

Kelydra Welcker, 18, of Parkersburg, W.Va., a senior at Parkersburg South High School, who invented a way to purify drinking water in her community by developing a test for the presence of a controversial industrial compound, and then creating a method for removing the chemical from water.

Heather Wilder, 13, of Las Vegas, Nev., a seventh-grader at Ernest Becker Middle School, who has written a series of 10 booklets to help foster children understand and cope with their situations, based on her own experiences as a foster child.

The National Honorees were chosen by a national selection committee that was co-chaired by U.S. Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Arthur Ryan of Prudential. Also serving on the committee were actor Richard Dreyfuss; Alma Powell, Chair of America's Promise - The Alliance for Youth; Robert Goodwin, former President and CEO of the Points of Light Foundation; Amy B. Cohen, Director of Learn and Serve America at the Corporation for National and Community Service; Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA; Donald T. Floyd Jr., President and CEO of National 4-H Council; Michael Cohen, President and CEO of Achieve, Inc.; Kathryn Forbes, National Chair of Volunteers, American Red Cross; Joe Militello, President of NASSP; and two 2006 Prudential Spirit of Community National Honorees: Geneva Johnson of the Bronx, N.Y., a student at Binghamton University, and Ajay Mangal of Pascagoula, Miss., a student at Columbia University.