Hopewell Middle School Student Goes Home With National Award

A student joins an elite group of students nationwide to receive The National Beta Club's highest award.

Nico Leis, an eighth grade student, will receive the John W. Harris Leadership Award at the Georgia Beta Convention being held on Nov. 17-18 in Macon.

Hopewell Middle School Principal Lenora Patterson and Junior Beta Club sponsors Erin Bolling and Stephanie Sosebee surprised him with the news on Nov. 9.

The National Beta Club recognizes 25 Junior Betas from across the nation each year. 

"It was awesome. They completely surprised me and it was really awesome to find out," Nico said.

Nico said he has a drive, a passion to volunteer and help people out.

"What I get out of it is just kind of knowing that I'm helping people and I'm making the community a better place," Nico said.

To him, helping out is just as rewarding as getting good grades, winning a baseball tournament, getting a 100 on a project or acing a test.

His mother, Ana Maria Leis, said they told Nico he had to take ownership of his volunteering and make his own choices.

Some of his volunteer efforts include:

• He is a peer tutor;
• He helps at the carnivals for local elementary schools;
• Assists in a soup kitchen with a fellow Beta member;
• Helped the school's Relay for Life team raise more than $6,000 last year for the American Cancer Society.

"Perhaps the most impressive area of service is Nico’s dedication to a local assisted living home named Dogwood Forest," the essay by the Jr. Beta sponsors said. "Nico talks about the assisted living home as though every person should be honored to serve the elderly. However, we all know this in not the norm in society."

"Since he was little we have always said we are the most curious to see what he is going to do with his talents because he keeps aiming higher and higher and has this drive that a normal 14 year old does not," his mother said. "When others are at the movies or the mall, he by choice would rather be volunteering, working or doing something productive."

She relates the story of one of those Dogwood Forest residents, who now talks to Nico–and his mother–regularly on the phone as well.

"Ms. Ina Fishman said to me, 'When my husband Jerry went into the hospital due to a medical emergency and I was alone eating dinner in the dining hall, Nico kept me company and sat and talked with me so I would not be alone, he was my biggest comfort in my loneliest, scariest time,'" Ana Maria Leis said.

What's next for Nico?

"I have a dream to do a drive for the Family Haven family shelter, where women who have bad lives at home and have children, they go to this shelter for protection and for help. And so they need supplies there because they are always running low," Nico said.

He's looking for paper goods such as toilet paper, paper towels, diapers and laundry detergent. He's already started, and plans to enlist the Jr. Beta Club and hopefully his entire school.

His classmates can bring the supplies to school. Nico is offering–with his parents' help and approval–to collect donated goods at home.

"If they can't drop off at my doorstep, I could go to their doorstep and get it," he said.

Contact Nico at home via email or call the family's home office number at 678-240-0580.

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