Outstanding Student Volunteers

Two Cincinnati Country Day School students were recognized at the 59^th Annual AJC Simon Lazarus Jr. Human Relations Awards ceremony in May. Along with other local students, Fleur Helmantel `24 and Ashley Odom `25 were honored as outstanding student volunteers who have demonstrated a passion for making our community a better place to live.

Each school can nominate one junior and one senior student based on their service hours and involvement. Throughout the years, dozens of local public, private, and parochial high schools have nominated deserving students for this prestigious award.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Simon Lazarus Jr. Award committee look for students who demonstrate leadership in improving human relations in their school, community, or beyond as either an individual or as part of a group effort. The human relations efforts should include building bridges with others and working together to serve community needs, lead others to tackle social issues with tangible impact or act to reduce prejudice, hate, and intolerance.

They then select five juniors (four finalists and one winner) and five seniors (four finalists and one winner) from all nominations. This year, Ashley was selected as one of five finalists in the junior class and received a cash prize.

Ashley has been working with the Joe Nuxhall Miracle League Fields for the past three years. This league allows kids and adults with different special needs to play baseball in a safe, fun, and accepting environment. Her newest passion has been working with New Vocations, which rehabilitates, retrains, and rehomes retired racehorses. Ashley found a passion in helping these horses get a new lease on life living as a “normal” horse again.

Fleur was nominated by Laura Gunn, director of service learning, for the senior class.  “She has done fantastic work with the Dandelion Club at Country Day as the leader of the group. Fleur has managed this team of students, who have worked hard to produce lesson materials including plays and videos to teach the migrant children at the Dandelion School in China about the English language. She also completed many of her service hours at Stepping Stones over the past couple of summers. Lastly, Fleur traveled to Costa Rica with me last year as part of the CCDX Week group. She was a strong leader in everything we did and was also very enthusiastic about it all too.”