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Mayor Anthony Williams and Jacqueline Meers of the D.C. Commision
on National and Community Service presented SPA sophomore Justin
Bibb with the Mayor’s Youth Community Service Award in November.
photo by Bill Petros |
SPA Sophomore Wins Mayor’s Service Award
Outgoing
Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams recently presented SPA sophomore
Justin Bibb with the Mayor’s Youth Community Service Award for a
year and a half of local volunteer work Bibb never anticipated doing.
“I never envisioned getting involved in service before I came to
AU,” said Bibb, who has tutored local preschool students, helped
coordinate an environmental fair for a local elementary school, and most
recently launched his own program to boost volunteerism in D.C. “I
just assumed I’d be working on the Hill, getting into politics.”
After participating in AU’s Summer Transition Enrichment Program
(STEP) before his freshman year, however, Bibb started to change his mind.
“He got his first taste, helping FLY [Facilitating Leadership in
Youth] kids paint a mural in Southeast,” said Service Learning Coordinator
Vanessa Palma. “He got to know some of the issues in the area, so
he wanted to come back for more.”
‘More’ for Bibb meant tutoring local preschoolers through
AU’s Freshman
Service Experience and teaching Brightwood Elementary School students
about recycling and ecosystems through the SPA Leadership Program. Both
projects, said Leadership Program Director Sarah Stiles, brought out his
natural gifts. “He really connected with the children,” she
recalled. “I remember seeing him squatting down to be the same size
as them, digging with them in the dirt to plant their seeds. He was always
surrounded by the children. He just had that ability to seamlessly enter
their world.”
Bibb was also entering another world. His work in the D.C. community drove
him to learn more about one of the city's most troubled areas, Anacostia.
“I could see the poverty,” he recalled. “I met kids
16 or 15 years old, out of school, not knowing how to read. I saw the
drug pushers.”
That firsthand knowledge shifted Bibb’s aspirations from the Hill
down to the streets. “I started to realize that [the Hill] may be
where they have all the power to make policy,” he explained, “but
the real work is happening in the trenches.”
Bibb won a fellowship with the Community Research and Learning (CORal)
Network last year to research strategies for empowering D.C. youth. One
strategy, he found, was helping D.C. students discover the value of service.
“Kids really do have a desire to step up and be active in their
communities,” he explained. “They just need to see a connection
between volunteering and where they live.”
Bibb began making those connections for students at Thurgood Marshall
Academy as part of his work with CORal last spring. Though D.C. schools
require students to perform 100 hours of community service, few schools
link students with volunteer opportunities. That’s where Bibb and
a dozen other CORal fellows came in. They began coordinating with local
soup kitchens and hospitals to give students those opportunities. Then
the fellowship ended.
“He was shocked that this could end when it seemed like the work
was going so well,” said Stiles, who nominated Bibb for the award.
“He didn’t think it was fair to the [Thurgood Marshall] students.
It was a huge disappointment, and yet he had this drive... he couldn’t
walk away.”
So he didn’t. Working over the summer, Bibb won a $1,000 grant from
Youth Service America, to create D.C.
Today–D.C. Tomorrow. The new nonprofit partners AU, George Washington
University, and Thurgood Marshall Academy to help Thurgood Marshall students
engage in service learning projects in their neighborhoods.
The impact has been immediate. At a kick-off event in October, D.C. Today–D.C.
Tomorrow spurred more than 60 Thurgood Marshall students to sign up for
local service projects. “There’s been a great response,”
said Marshall Program Coordinator Jessica Sher. “We see at least
20 of our students show up every week, and there’s definitely been
an impact on their self-awareness and self-esteem ... Justin’s just
a great role model.”
To honor Bibb’s work on this project and the nonstop stream of community
service he’s undertaken since arriving at AU, Mayor Williams awarded
him a trophy and a certificate of achievement during a ceremony at the
Academy of Educational Development. According to the mayor’s office,
the Mayor’s Youth Community Service Award is given each month as
a way of “rewarding and recognizing the contributions one youth,
age 24 or younger, has made through community service.”
For Bibb, however, the award is less a reward for what he has done already
and more a motivator for what he hopes to do in the future. “To
me it’s just a reminder of how much still needs to be done,”
he said. “The award just pushes me to do more.”
-Matt Getty, originally published in American Weekly
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