Barron Prize Announces 2006 Winners

NYLC congratulates the winners of The 2006 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, an annual award honoring outstanding young leaders who make a significant, positive difference to people and the planet. Each year, The Barron Prize selects 10 winners nationwide, five who have helped their communities and fellow human beings and five who have protected the health and sustainability of the environment. Each winner will receive a $2,000 prize to be applied to higher education or to a service project.

The 2006 winners …

• Daniel Cayce (18, Arkansas) directs Cayce's Charities, a nonprofit that distributed more than 80,000 tons of second-hand appliances, furniture, and other necessities — items that would have otherwise ended up in landfills — to thousands of people living in poverty.
• Talia Leman (11, Iowa) organized Trick or Treat for the Levee Catastrophe (T.L.C.), uniting thousands of children across the country to raise more than $5 million for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
• Evin McMullen and Angela Primbas (16, Ohio) co-founded Save Our Stream to educate others about the threatened native Ohio brook trout.
• Vasanth Kuppuswamy (16, South Carolina) volunteers at a school in India and raised more than $8,000 to improve conditions for the school's 1,200 students.
• Erika Chase and Kayla Carpenter (18, California) created the Annual Salmon Run Relay to increase awareness of the plight of the salmon and its importance to the health of the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk tribes of Northern California.
• Kennedy Kulish (9, Pennsylvania) raised more than $30,000 for children's heart research and other causes through her Kisses for Kaeden project.
• Zander Srodes (16, Florida) created Turtle Talks, an interactive program presented to thousands of students in an effort to save the endangered loggerhead sea turtles.
• Phebe Meyers (17, Vermont) founded Change the World Kids, a nonprofit student group that raised more than $100,000 to purchase and protect rain forests in Costa Rica.
• Eric Meyerowitz (18, New York) organized dozens of volunteers to serve as advocates and English teachers for homeless immigrant day-laborers on Long Island.
• Smitha Ramakrishna (15, Arizona) leads a group of students committed to water conservation and organizes annual walk-a-thons that have raised more than $4,000 to fund water purification systems for schools in India.

The Barron Prize was founded in 2001 by author T.A. Barron and named for his mother, Gloria Barron.