Heights Youth Club Member Nominated For Award

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OH — Five Cleveland-area Boys & Girls Clubs members have been nominated to become the Youth of the Year for Cleveland. The winner will move on to state competition and will be honored at a breakfast in March.

“We are blessed to have such a great group of candidates this year,” Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland President and CEO Ron Soeder said in a statement.

One of this year's nominees is a four-year member of the Heights Youth Club, Mercedes Klouda. The senior from John Hay High School is planning to study education at Bowling Green State University. She is also an honors student and co-captain of the cheerleading squad.

Former Heights Youth Club Director Beverly Burgess said Klouda's “work ethic, self-esteem and personal resilience traits are inspiring to the club staff and her peers. When faced with a challenge, she works tirelessly to achieve her goals and sets high expectations for herself.”

Klouda has been a volunteer at the Ebenezer Food Pantry at Fairmount Presbyterian Church for the past nine years. She has spent thousands of hour serving meals to community members. In 2016, she was part of a church group that went to the Dominican Republic and helped build a church in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the nation.

For her part, Klouda sadi the Boys & Girls Club of Cleveland “has had a huge impact on my life, and I will forever be a part of (it).”

The other nominees from the area are Danesha McKinney, who comes from the King Kennedy Club; Nakayla Reynolds, a two-year member of the John Adams Teen Center; Tamara Thomas, from the Broadway Club; Neallyn Vega, who has been a Boys & Girls Club of Cleveland member since she was 6-years-old.

Photos from BGCC