With her great attitude and energy, Zeina Eissa, hosted by World Link, makes her success on the YES program look like a slam dunk. But the student from Egypt has worked hard to make it a great year. In the month of February alone, she surpassed her community service goals; gave four cultural presentations on her home country of Egypt; made significant progress on her Global Youth Service Day project; and continued to hone her skills as a basketball player with her team at Norwalk High School.
In total, Zeina has dedicated almost 200 hours to volunteer service. She enjoys visiting the local nursing home in Norwalk, IA where she watches movies, plays Bingo, completes puzzles, and organizes fun dance parties for the residents, bringing smiles to their faces on each visit. As a volunteer for the disabled community, she helped her teacher organize a holiday bowling party for a special needs group and cooked them an Egyptian meal, which they loved. She regularly volunteers with younger children and continually
finds ways to inspire them. During one of her visits to the local middle school’s after-school program, she ran an empowerment activity; it was such a success the administration would like to implement it school-wide. Zeina hopes to do workshops with middle-schoolers aimed at breaking down negative stereotypes of different cultures.
Zeina and her basketball team have bonded on and off the court, so it was natural for her to include them in her main Global Youth Service Day project. The team was no stranger to fundraising, and they helped Zeina with bake sales at two of their basketball game to raise money for Mercy Cancer Center, the focus of her project. The ticket sales from one basketball game went directly to Zeina’s project. Through these and other fundraising activities, Zeina raised $900 for the cancer center, with some of the funds going to pay for special t-shirts she designed for the patients, and the rest, a monetary donation.
Zeina is also a star student. She won first place in a geometry class competition and a PE competition, won best project in her art class, and took second place in a poetry writing competition in English. In school, she is an active member of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), French Club, and a mentoring club.
Every day she strives to make her community and the world a better place for all.
Congratulations, Zeina!
