Awards honor local youth Posted Wednesday, April 28, 2004 by Vanessa Miller for the Iowa City Press-Citizen One day in class, Becca Fulton saw a movie that made her sad. In it, other children around the world were being overworked and under-appreciated. The 11-year-old wanted to help. So that is what she did. With 10 of her peers from Lucas Elementary, Fulton helped raise money for and promote awareness about the problem of child labor. "I was really inspired to help those kids," Fulton said, adding that she is one of the founding members of Children Helping Innocent Laborers Democratically, a student group known as CHILD. "We have definitely talked about continuing to meet this summer and trying to work as hard as we can." It is that spirit of compassion that infiltrated a group of 39 local youth honored Tuesday night for their selfless efforts during the First Annual Youth Human Rights Award Ceremony. "Marwan Ahmed ... Zoe Grueskin ... Elliot Glenn," Mayor Ernie Lehman said, constantly interrupted by applause from the more than 100-person crowd Tuesday as he called up each award recipient. "Is that a pretty impressive group of young people or what?" he said, as the honorees ranging in age from elementary students to high school seniors stood in front of their glowing family, friends and teachers. "And these kids are just the tip of the iceberg," said Alisa Meggitt, a sixth-grade teacher at Lucas Elementary, adding that she has students working for animal rights, attending City Council forums and following the Legislature. "They are truly invested little citizens." The never-before-held youth awards were modeled after Iowa City's annual Human Rights Awards Breakfast and inspired by Lisa Beckman, the Human Rights Commission chairwoman. The traditional awards have honored individuals and businesses in the community the past 20 years. "When I say this is tremendous, I mean that. It's truly tremendous," Beckman told the students Tuesday night. Although human rights awards historically have been distributed to a select group of nominees, the youth awards were given to every nominee who has done something to further human rights. That type of recognition and encouragement of selfless work and dedication to helping humanity is important to Alex Christophersen, an 11-year-old Lucas Elementary student who was honored Tuesday. "I thought it was quite amazing that I got it," he said. "I'm so happy." This article originally appeared in the Iowa City Press Citizen. The original can be found here.
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