JACKSONVILLE – The Bank of America Charitable Foundation has announced that five Jacksonville-area high school students have been selected as 2015 Student Leaders. The award recognizes community-minded high school juniors and seniors and places them in paid eight-week internships with a local nonprofit organization.
Jessica Lucas, who recently graduated from Mandarin High School, joins Saaniya Bagdadi, Zuriel Ibones, Grace Stotlemyer and Klaudja Taragjini as summer interns with Communities in Schools Jacksonville, a student-dropout prevention program. While in high school, Lucas’s community involvement included participation in programs that sought to combat childhood obesity. She credits I AM A STAR Foundation, a youth leadership development group, and its founder, Betty Seabrook Burney, for inspiring her to make a difference in her community. She will attend Florida State College at Jacksonville and study nursing.
Greg Smith, Northeast Florida market president for Bank of America, said: “The Student Leaders program is part of our broader investment in connecting young people to education and training that prepares them for 21st century jobs, including a focus on better money habits for better financial futures.”
In July, these five young individuals will join more than 200 Student Leaders from around the country for a weeklong leadership summit in Washington, D.C., where they will participate in skill-building workshops, a service learning project, sessions to develop better money habits and meetings with Members of Congress. Since 2004, the program has supported 2,200 young people nationwide.
To learn more about Bank of America’s Corporate Social Responsibility programs and practices, please visit www.bankofamerica.com/about and follow the company on Twitter @BofA_News and @BofA_Community.
