Area Chase Youth Awards winners named

The Chase Youth Awards were presented March 27, and several greater Spokane Valley students received awards for citizenship, community service, courage, creativity, diversity, leadership, personal achievement and the Spirit of Jim Chase. There were four groups of nominations: youth, middle school, teens and adults.

Here is a listing of the Spokane Valley winners and a brief description of why they were nominated:

Teen awards

Kelly Hansen

Nominated by her mayor, teacher, pastor and father, Hansen was the recipient of the Teen Community Involvement Award.

A freshman at West Valley High School, Kelly felt the need for people together in her Millwood neighborhood to get to know each other.

She settled on setting up a farmers’ market in Millwood and even testified in front of the Millwood Town Council. “The market opened in May, 2007, and was a big success,” wrote Judy Harris in her nomination letter. “Neighbors shop for fresh, nutritious food, become engaged in conversations and stay to listen to the live music.”

Harris added that Hansen had a very heavy workload at school, helped lead the reorganization of the school library at West Valley City School, played piano at Bethany House and is now lobbying the town council to start a teen council.

Kevin E. Johnson

Johnson won the Teen Diversity Award. He’s an 11th-grader at Contract-based Education in Spokane Valley and an active member of Odyssey Youth Center.

“When Kevin Johnson first came to Odyssey, he slipped quietly in the door, filled out our intake sheet, sat on a couch and never moved the entire five hours he was there,” wrote nominator Ann Marie Floch.

For months Kevin wouldn’t speak to the members and volunteers at the center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth and their allied friends.

After being attacked at a nearby park, Kevin decided to take a stand and report the incident. From then on, Floch said he has been an active and outspoken member of the youth center.

“He volunteers for every community service action we do,” Floch wrote. “He helped us set up, walked with a sign and helped take down all materials needed for World’s Aids Day at City Hall. He recently helped unload large trucks full of produce and other food for the Christmas Aids meals.”

He also completed the Odyssey Out Loud Leadership Program, an eight-week workshop, where he was required to give three speeches and be involved in discussions.

Liberty Lake Youth Commission

The winner of the Teen Group Leadership Award was the Liberty Lake Youth Commission.

The group was founded over a year ago by local teens to enhance community awareness and communication with young persons, protect and advocate the best interests of youth within the community, and promote youth interests in culture and diversity,” wrote nominator and advisor to the group Jessica Platt.

The commission has held a number of events and activities for families and teens and has assisted those in need.

“During the spring of 2007, the Youth Commission held a fundraising event called the All Fool’s Easter Egg Hunt,” Platt wrote. “The event provided kids in the community a fun and safe activity.”

The group collected donations from 23 businesses and sponsors for the event and raised $1,300, and $500 of that total was donated to the Liberty 5-0 Skate Park Committee to benefit a new skate park in the community.

They have also collected food for Second Harvest Food Bank and volunteered time to build a home for Habitat For Humanity-Spokane.

“This community service activity provided them an excellent opportunity to make a difference and have fun while doing it.”

Middle School awards

Yes I Can

Yes I Can, a program at Mountain View Middle School, won the middle school group diversity award.

The program brings together students with special needs and those from the general population of the school.

“The students in Yes I Can work together in the school community on a daily basis,” wrote nominator Marcy Williams.

The students have taken on recycling projects in the school, stock the shelves in the cafeteria, bake and sell cookies twice a week to students and staff.

“The students in Yes I Can are exemplary individuals who are excelling academically and socially, and they deserve to be recognized for their diversity and service to our school,” Williams wrote.

Riley Bowles

Bowles, an eighth-grader from West Valley City School, was the leadership winner.

Riley was nominated by his teacher Matthew Phillipy, who noticed Riley’s passion for marine biology on a field trip to the Port Townsend Marine Science Center three years ago.

Since then, Riley has helped revive his school’s aquaculture lab by helping to write grants, replacing broken and outdated equipment, raising 200 trout and releasing them into local waterways, and hatching almost 300 trout.

“To demonstrate his commitment, Riley successfully lobbied the state Fish and Wildlife department to allow him and his team of aquaculture peers to assist in the trout spawning at the fish hatchery,” Pillipy wrote. “This is a very delicate and complicated process that has never been conducted by students before.

Road to Success

The Spirit of Jim Chase Award went to Road to Success from Mountain View Middle School.

“The students who comprise the RTS Program present with unique emotional, social and behavioral challenges that place them at risk for academic failure and school drop-out,” wrote Marcy Williams, a counselor at the East Valley school.

During this school year, the group had three major areas of service: global, community and school projects.

The students organized a penny drive to collect funds for the Nalta Hospital in Bangladesh. The $500 raised is the equivalent to around $34,000 in Bangladeshi funds.

The RTS students also made 100 baby blankets for the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery in Spokane, volunteered at Santa Express and volunteered at Valleyfest.

At the school, the students adopted a bathroom which was covered in graffiti and repainted it with impressionist art. They started a letter campaign to a local appliance business with the hope of replacing the kitchen equipment in the consumer education classroom, sold slushies at lunchtime, held a Veterans Day reception where they greeted and talked with local veterans, baked cookies, made coffee, decorated and served at the reception and prepared a baked potato bar at the school.

Youth awards

The Broadway Star

Fourth- and fifth-graders at Broadway Elementary School have been learning the ins and outs of the newspaper business. They received the Group Youth Creativity Award.

“The Broadway Star is completely student created: the paper enables students who are interested in journalism to be a part of a project that entails hard work, dedication and a really fun and unique way to share what goes on here at Broadway,” wrote nominator and student teacher Jill Munstedt.

The students all filled out an application to be on the staff as well as went through an interview process to become reporters.

“I have no doubt after working closely with these students that they will be successful in whatever their future goals may be,” Munstedt wrote.

Adult awards

Teresa Skinner

Skinner was given the Individual Jim Chase Asset Builder Adult Award.

The founding figure of Team St. Luke’s, Skinner has worked to provide opportunities for the disabled to participate in adaptive sports.

Nominated by Bill Kemp of Riverside High School, Skinner has helped St. Luke’s to build an adaptive sports program. Now, nine different sports teams have been offered.

“When I was first approached by a wheelchair athlete who wanted to do high school cross country, I knew nothing about adaptive sports,” Kemp said in his nomination letter. “Teresa went the extra mile, again and again, as I learned to coach these wonderful athletes.”

Skinner also convinced the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to allow wheelchair athletes to score along with other athletes at the state track meet, and several local schools: Riverside, Newport, North Central, Central Valley and Tekoa have earned state trophies with the new system.

“I cannot say enough about the impact that Teresa Skinner has had, not only on individuals, but on the community as well,” Kemp wrote.

The Next Generation Zone

The winner of the Group Jim Chase Asset Builder Adult Award was Next Generation Zone, a program that helps 16- through 21-year-olds gain skills and experience to get jobs. The staff provides opportunities for paid internships and work experiences, on-the-job training, career exploration, resume and application assistance, on-site high school re-entry, GED preparation classes and college planning.

“The Next Generation Zone takes unemployable young adults, lifts them out of poverty and transforms them into productive citizens, increasing the labor force to support local businesses and the region’s economic development,” wrote nominator Donna Dalzell.

“So far this program year, 1,369 young adults accessed services,” Dalzell wrote in her nomination letter. “At the Next Generation Zone, all employees do whatever it takes to help their clients become self-sufficient.”