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Aleah Woodmansee isn’t old enough to vote yet, but she already knows how important it is to get involved in your community. The soon-to-be senior at Central High School belongs to her school’s FCCLA Club—a leadership organization whose members find ways to help out thru community service projects, and she’s on the soccer team. She makes A’s and B’s in her classes, she works part-time at McDonald’s and is president of the Keystone Club at the Boys and Girls Club of Springfield, which she’s been a member of since the beginning of 6th grade.
Thru Keystone Club, she’s helped out with a number of other community service projects.
All that and more are why Pat Gartland, director of the Boys and Girls Club, nominated Aleah for KSMU’s Sense of Community Series on Outstanding Youth…
He describes the 17-year-old…

"Kind, caring, sensitive, hard-working, responsible--she's just a really wonderful role model for our younger members."

Aleah says it takes a lot of planning and keeping track of what’s going on at all times to keep the schedule she keeps.
But she likes to be busy and to aim high…

"My mom has always considered me an overachiever. I don't know, I just like to do the best I can possibly do at, like, anything and everything."

It’s hard to believe, knowing her now, but Aleah the 6th grader was extremely shy when she first joined the Boys and Girls Club…

"I keep telling everyone to, like, emphasize how shy I was. I couldn't even talk to the pizza man on the phone I was so shy."

She credits the Boys and Girls Club staff and her friends at the club for helping her break out of her shell.
She joined Keystone Club, and, when some older kids graduated and moved on, Aleah was nominated for president and was elected.
She’s already put in many hours of volunteer time doing things like planning and carrying out a food drive and sorting clothes and food for Convoy of Hope…

"One of my favorites is actually, like, one of the worst jobs. It's actually street cleanup because we go around, of course, picking up the trash on the streets 'cause I like to see the streets clean. I think it's really sad to see all the pollution--all that, and so it makes me feel better and it also makes our neighborhood look better."

She explains why she feels it’s important to give back…

"Because the community has done so much for me. Habitat for Humanity and Drury University both built my home that I live in now, and that, of course, was done through a bunch of volunteers, and so I just see it as a way to repay all those who have helped me."

Aleah comes from a single-parent home and helps her mom by watching her younger brother and sister and a niece who lives with them and by helping with household chores. According to Gartland, she never complains about helping out and sharing the household responsibilities. Even after undergoing adverse circumstances, he says, Aleah remains positive and has a great outlook on her future. She says she’s grown because of the obstacles she’s had to overcome…

"It made me realize that, no matter how hard of a situation you're in, you can always get help, and then, also, it shows me ways that I can help those around me. If I see someone in need then, like, I know what I can do to help them."

And Aleah counts her mom among her role models…

"Because she's gone through so much in her life, and she's managed to raise four kids, and just being a single parent, and so she's definitely one of my major role models."

Aleah herself tries hard to be a role model for those around her…especially the younger kids who she sometimes works with at the Boys and Girls Club…

"They see everything that you do, and I think if they see positive things, like coming from people then they might want to imitate that and then try to be as good if not better than you were. A lot of the kids, some of them I don't even know, they run up to me, and they're like 'hey, Aleah,' and they all give me hugs, and I just help them out with their homework sometimes, and if I see--one time I saw a kid--he was really upset-- and I just sat down and talked with him with whatever was going on."

Aleah has high hopes for the future. As a member of the A+ program at Central, she plans to attend OTC for two years out of high school for free before studying either fine arts or culinary arts. She’s not sure yet what career path to take. Pat Gartland says she’d make an excellent teacher or Boys and Girls Club staff member. Aleah says even if she doesn’t end up working at the Boys and Girls Club, she plans to volunteer there.
Recently her hard work paid off when she was named the 2010 Youth of the Year recipient of the Boys and Girl Club…

"I was so shocked to see my face up on the screen. I just went into shock. I started crying and then I had to give my acceptance speech, and I was stumbling over words, and, it was just an amazing feeling that people voted for you to be youth of the year."

She truly proved how far she’d come when she gave her acceptance speech before a crowd of 1000.
The award comes with a college scholarship, and after high school graduation next May, she’ll be the first in her family to attend college.
 

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