Parks and Recognition

National honor for student Von Nieda Park Task Force

Students from St. Anthony of Padua School in Camden were recently recognized with a national award for their attempts to clean up their city through community organizing.

On Monday, June 11, the Student Leaders’ Von Nieda Park Task Force received a Jefferson Award for Public Service-Youth Service Challenge, an honor that recognizes youth across the nation who are active in their communities.

Since January, the nine St. Anthony school students have met with city and council officials to find ways to clean up Von Nieda Park, which was plagued with garbage and broken playground equipment.

Due to their urging, the city helped clean up the park, getting rid of garbage and replacing broken swings with new ones. As well, school students have helped out themselves, painting park benches and decorating them, in an attempt to discourage graffiti vandals.

The task force uses community organizing in its goal to make the park one “where kids feel safe,” said 13-year-old Vianca Salcedo.

The eighth grader was grateful for the Jefferson Award and the Youth Service Challenge which “is acknowledging our little voices and our work.”

The school also received a $500 cash prize. The students plan to use half the money for park clean-up, and the rest to fund a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with government officials on their work in Camden.

The Camden County Freeholders will recognize the students’ work later this month with a citation, and will donate flowers to be planted in the park.

For Father Jud Weiksnar, pastor of St. Anthony of Padua, the students’ work in getting the community on board in helping to transform the park, an area which he’s been trying to change for some time, has been gratifying.

The students’ leadership has “gotten me out of complaining mode, and into community-organizing mode,” he said.

Established in 1972, the Jefferson Awards are meant to serve as “the Nobel Prize for public service.” The co-founders were Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sen. Robert Taft, Jr. of Ohio and Sam Beard, founder and chairman of the National Development Council (NDC), a national non-profit organization dedicated to redeveloping urban and rural low-income communities.

Students of the Von Nieda Park Task Force are eighth graders Nicole Valladares, Vianca Salcedo, Joseph Payero and Lizbeth Pena; seventh graders Victor Akinlotan, Soledad Velazquez and John Pina; and sixth graders Gloria Gutierrez and Cianie Yambo.