Dunbar Vocational Career Academy High School

Chicago, Illinois

Jefferson Awards Students in Action

We Mighty Leaders Are Just

Getting Started!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Dunbar Mighty Leaders

Our school celebrates and promotes service!Dr. Covington is our biggest fan. She

encourages and supports everything we do!

Mrs. Fujimoto is our faculty advisor. She keeps us on track.

Our Service Learning Coordinator, Ms. Romito, ensures service learning

hours are recorded. This year we set a school record!

Our Mighty Men & Women earned 37,191 service hours. The

financial impact is worth $781,011 to our community!

Mighty Leadership Team

Dunbar’s vision is of a school of service leaders, who create positive change. When people think of a Chicago Public School, they will

think of our students changing the world.

Our Members: Samantha Davies, Tatiana Williams, Britney Howard, Hannah Neely, Karolyn Denise Jones, Triana

Chatman-Page, N’dea Davis, Demarco Ewings, Briantay Burnett, and Sekia McCline

All our members have an equal voice in the organization.

Several of our members attended the Fall Leadership Conference at IIT and had a fabulous time! Four of our leaders attended the National

Youth Service Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a fantastic experience.

We are recruiting underclassmen to join our ranks, in order to guarantee a smooth transition through the years. We have identified

several candidates we hope will become Mighty Student Leaders.

We Live to Serve!Each month, we accept nominations from

students, teachers, and staff for our Student Winners. Our Winners: November 2010

N’dea Davis and Tatiana WilliamsDecember 2010

Demarco Ewings and Briantay BurnettJanuary 2011

Hannah Neely and Karolyn Denise JonesFebruary 2011

India Khan and Shannon BrownMarch 2011

Octavia Holton and Samantha Davies

Any student looking for volunteer opportunities can seek out one of our

Mighty Student Leaders. We are happy to connect students to groups that need

members, and vice versa. We have helped Mayor Daley’s Book Club,

BuildOn, and the Ladies of Distinction recruit new members.

We signed up students to volunteer at the Shamrock Shuffle with Back On My Feet, a group that provides homeless people with job skills and teaches them to run

for exercise and stress relief. Our canned food drive benefits the Greater

Chicago Food Depository, and our clothing drive benefits the Salvation

Army. Students can earn service learning hours for helping those in need.

We are very excited to be helping with the Special Olympics in May. Our students

will be cheering for our athletes and providing encouragement!

Mighty Leaders at Work

We have been selling candy and chips to raise money for our first ever Scholarship

for Outstanding Student Service. So far we have raised $336. We hope to raise $1000.

Should we have funds remaining, the balance will be donated to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Getting the Word Out

We post the names of our Student Winners on the Dunbar Website: www.dunbarhs.org

We have a Mighty Students in Action Blog where we post the names of our Student Winners, as well as information about current and upcoming service opportunities.

We wrote a press release announcing our Celebration of Student Service Assembly which was forwarded to media outlets around Chicago, including Chicago Public Radio, The Chicago Defender, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Tribune, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and our Ward 2 Alderman Robert Fioretti.

Big Plans for the Future

We have not had an opportunity to partner with another Students in Action School this year, but

we have big plans to do so next year.

We made many new friends at the National Youth Service Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio, which we

hope will lead us to amazing partnerships in the years to come. We learned so much about

networking at the NYSS, that we can’t wait to put our new skills to work!

Celebration of Student Service Assembly

Monday, March 28, 2011, we hosted our first ever Celebration of Student Service Assembly. We recognized our Student Leaders, and there were

presentations from Students in Action, the Men of Distinction, & the Ladies of Distinction. Our principal Dr. Covington spoke about the importance of

service. The audience enjoyed a musical performance from Trevor Hill and Jarvis Morgan, and a modern dance performance from India Khan and

Shannon Brown.

After the assembly, there was a Volunteer Fair, where students signed up to join clubs that were recruiting new members. BuildOn, the Ladies of

Distinction, Special Olympics and Best Buddies, and Mayor Daley’s Book Club were all excited to welcome new members. Furthermore, Back on My

Feet, an organization that provides job skills and networking skills to homeless people, was there to sign up students to volunteer for the

Shamrock Shuffle 8K Race Sunday, April 10.

It was a great experience and we are looking forward to our next Celebration of Student Service Assembly in May. Our next Volunteer Fair will be in

October.