See It: The Community being helped

I organized a fund-raising event to help sponsor a student to attend the 13th Annual Historical Black College University Tour to North Carolina. This tour allows high school students to tour colleges such as Barber-Scotia, Bennett, Duke, Fayetteville State, Johnson C. Smith, University of North Carolina, North Carolina A & T, Shaw, St. Augustine and Winston-Salem State. The HBCU tour cost is $950.00 per student which includes round-trip air-fare, 5 day 4 night hotel accommodations, deluxe coach travel, college preparatory seminars,guided college tours, sight-seeing tours of the historical landmarks and cultural attractions.

I was inspired to organize the “The Sharnae Lewis Scholar-ship” because I had the pleasure of attending the 12th Annual HBCU Tour in April 2007. This tour allowed me to tour colleges in Atlanta, Florida and Alabama for 6 days 5 nights in which I had to personally fund-raised my own monies in order to attend this tour. Attending the tour allowed me to see what college life was all about and experience meeting new friends who would soon be my new
family, home away from home.

While organizing this event, my hope was to raise as much money as I could to assist several students to attend the upcoming “Unity Through Knowledge Tour”. Fortunately, I was able to fund-raise $425.00. The money was donated to the “Unity Through Knowledge” 32nd Street Theater in which Kelcey West is the Tour Director and Founder of this wonderful program. The money was presented to the organization in which Kelcey West presented the “Sharnae Lewis Scholarship” to a high school senior who was financially challenged and was deserving of the scholar-ship to attend the tour. The great thing about the 32nd Street Theater, “Unity Through Knowledge Tour” was that many of the colleges waived their application fees
which can be very costly if you are applying for many different colleges. Another positive part of this program is that high school Seniors are given an opportunity to be interviewed during the tour with the possibility of receiving a partial or full paid scholarship. Of course, this is based on each of the students academic achieve-ments.

Although I attended the “Unity Through Knowledge Tour” in my Junior year of high school, it was a great experience for me. I feel that every student deserves to be given an
opportunity to attend a college tour. I realize that financially this can be a burden on some families. However, I do believe that if more young individuals like myself put forth the effort of encouragement and show initiative, then maybe more students would want to further their education.

Being a star future leader is who I want to be. I know that I am truly the definition of a true leader and feel the need to “Take A Stand When Others Won’t”. In doing so, I have realized that being a future leader means being generous to others and showing them that you care about
the community and its needs.