2021 LexYouth’s Presidential Service Awards Ceremony

By Joanna Liu

Students, parents, and CALex volunteers gathered in Lexington on Nov. 6 to grant President Service Awards to LexYouth volunteer teachers.

Five students received a Gold Award, two students received a Silver Award, and eight students received a Bronze Award.

LexYouth is a youth volunteer program launched by CALex in Dec. 2020. Most students receiving the award gained their service hours by teaching through the program.

At the event, Houze Xu, the president of CALex, gave a speech explaining how LexYouth has contributed to the community through its ~100 youth volunteers and +2,000 accumulated volunteer hours. Then, awards were distributed to winners.

According to award winners, volunteer opportunities have provided them with positive benefits.

Bronze winners Beatrix Picottee and Sophie Lim, two Winsor School students who co-founded an online teaching program during the COVID-19 pandemic, said that volunteering has been an excellent way for them to contribute to the community.

 “One reason why people should do community services is the impact you can have—especially on younger kids—and you can influence them in positive ways,” Lim said.

“If you’re in a place of relative privilege or any kind of position at all, it’s good to give back because…it feels good to know you’re helping people,” Picottee said.

Some attendees have also mentioned the personal benefits of community work and volunteer service.

“It helps develop those skills so in the future if you want to volunteer for more complex things you can do that,” Aurora Wang, a sophomore at Lexington High School and winner of the Gold Presidential Award, said.

“My daughter has grown a lot and gained insight since attending this program. She has become more considerate since volunteering…I’m very supportive of her continuing volunteer work,” Yang Yu, a teacher and the parent of Gold Presidential Award winner Yuning Zhang, said.

Richard Zhang, the program director for CALex and LexYouth, said that he hopes the Awards Ceremony will allow them to celebrate the award winners and encourage future award applicants.

“This award ceremony is an opportunity for us to appreciate the youth leaders who worked hard…we also want to encourage more youth leaders to apply for this award in the future and sign up for our LexYouth program,” Zhang said.

In the future, Zhang and other volunteers of LexYouth are working to expand the program to a more diverse array of students and teachers.

“Diversity is a very important goal for this program [since] we want teachers and students to come from all kinds of different backgrounds. That way, they can help each other [and] we can build a stronger community [so] our youth generation can grow up to be stronger leaders for the world,” Zhang said.

Joanna Liu is a Sophomore at LHS and an Op-Ed editor for The Musket, LHS’s school newspaper. She has studied writing at the New York Times and Iowa Young Writers Studio (IYWS), and has published both creative and academic work. joannaliu47@gmail.com