NYLC and State Farm Companies Foundation to Honor the LaBranche Wetland Watchers and Barbara G. Shaiman

The National Youth Leadership Council and State Farm Companies Foundation have announced the winners of the 2006 State Farm Youth Leadership for Service-Learning and Service-Learning Practitioner Leadership Awards.

The LaBranche Wetland Watchers of Destrehan, La. — 250
students at Harry M. Hurst Middle School working with 7th-grade science
teacher Barry Guillot — will receive the State Farm Youth Leadership for Service-Learning Award.
The youths developed a service-learning project to prevent erosion of
their local wetlands in coastal Louisiana. Students learn science while
planting trees to prevent erosion, conducting water quality tests,
cleaning up trash, and sharing their knowledge and experience with
younger students and community members. On June 1, 2005, the Wetland
Watchers staged a press conference in New Orleans’ French Quarter,
standing on second-floor balconies and unfurling tarps to dramatize
what could happen in the face of a hurricane should the wetlands
disappear. Within three months, Hurricane Katrina hit. By September,
the Wetland Watchers were touring the region with Louisiana governor
Kathleen Blanco to encourage other students to join a letter-writing
campaign on the importance of the wetlands. As part of the award, the
project will receive $1,000 to fund future work.

Barbara G. Shaiman (pictured, left) of Villanova, Pa., will receive the State Farm Service-Learning Practitioner Leadership Award.
Inspired by her parents, Henry and Carola Greenspan, survivors of the
Holocaust, Shaiman created the nonprofit Champions of Caring in 1995 to
ensure that atrocities like the Holocaust never again happen to anyone.
Champions of Caring offers three programs to encourage youths to become
active leaders in their communities, focusing on issues of service,
citizenship, and social justice. The Champions of Caring Recognition
program honors young people for service in their communities. The
Ambassadors of Caring Leadership Program further prepares young people
who have been recognized as Champions to become peer leaders for
service and social entrepreneurship. Ambassadors plan and implement
projects to address authentic community needs — such as hunger,
nutrition, diversity, literacy, and violence — and make the projects
sustainable by recruiting others to take over when they move on.
The Journey of Champions character-education and service-learning
program offers curricula based on academic standards, which can be used
in the classroom or in after-school clubs to help students deal with
issues of conflict resolution and violence prevention, social and
emotional learning, civic engagement, and social responsibility.

The State Farm Youth Leadership for Service-Learning Excellence Award
recognizes kindergarten-through-12th-grade service-learning programs
and projects that demonstrate outstanding youth leadership, and the State Farm Service-Learning Practitioner Leadership Award
recognizes those practitioners who have equipped young people to lead
and serve, both through their direct work with youths and by nurturing
other practitioners. This year’s awards will be presented on March 24
at The 17th Annual National Service-Learning Conference in Philadelphia.