Chad Lauritzen left prepares to raise the bar as he launches the engineering of Aspen Youth to see how well their science skills paid off. Courtesy photo
During 2022, Marlene Trujillo earned her second Community Asset Award, as C’YA celebrates its 8th anniversary. Courtesy photoExecutive Director
Champions of Youth Ambitions celebrated its 8th anniversary this weekend. While our work has been drastically affected since the beginning of COVID 2022, we have found some ways to get our work done.
We started 2022 by recognizing some community heroes, with the Community Asset Awards. While the goal is to get our many nominees some community kudos, we still have some cape-less heroes that work hard each and every day.
We choose to salute Marlene Trujillo, Anna Collis, Heather Dominguez, James Fallon, Brandon Garcia, Patrick Fleming, Vangie Martinez, Sara Serna, Jared Tapia, Elsie Thompson, and Wendy Huff from the Los Alamos Smith’s store. Additionally, Amy Armstrong, Lisabeth Barthell, Mary Dinnell, Dave Martin, and Kim Waldschmidt were recognized for White Rock.
It really couldn’t have been done without the help of Marlene, who helped us to find some Smith’s members that have moved on to other opportunities.
“In receiving my second Community Asset Award I felt honored just knowing that I represent myself to the community and with my customers,” Trujillo said.
As COVID still rages through the community, some outdoor science allowed our Sci Guy, Chad Lauritzen to “Do the Science” with some of his favorite future scientists. He headed out to see Deidre Thorn and Felicia Thornton’s fifth grade class for some dissection and then headed to visit the Aspen Tigers. The Tigers did some engineering science with the classes of Amy Gilbert, Matt Allen and retiring Tammy Moore. The students learned the importance of seatbelts and car safety and designed their own safety cage for a raw egg.
Champions of Youth Ambitions would like to thank board members Karen Greenfield, Debra Minyard, Deb Snow and Valerie Harris for their continued support of C’YA.
“I’m proud to be a part of an organization that supports our youth,” said Minyard, a Pojoaque High School music educator.
The program also thanks the Women’s Society of the United Church, who supported the annual Community Asset Awards. You can learn more at www.cya-nm.org or visit us on Facebook, at Champions of Youth Ambitions.
The 4th grade Tigers prepared a card for Lauritzen. Courtesy photo