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Born three months premature, Betsie suffered a stroke that occurred while inside her mother’s womb. As a result, she is partially paralyzed from the eye down, limiting mobility on her right side; she wears a brace to control her hand and orthodics to aid her in walking. But Betsie optimistically approaches these challenges as launching points rather than hurdles to overcome.
As a toddler, Betsie learned American Sign Language to compensate for vision and speech impairments. She taught herself how to walk at age 3, a skill average children learn at one-years-old with the help of an adult. Since then, she has excelled in school, earning a 4.3 grade point average and a place in honors classes. But what is most remarkable is that while she may have started life with less than most, she has, over the years, given more than most could even imagine.
Betsie, a high school junior, is a leadership and founding volunteer with the American Red Cross Community Education Trainers (Comets) program. As part of Comets, Betsie first participated in Red Cross safety programs, such as Whales Tales, which shows kids how to be safe in, on and around water, and Home Alone, which offers latch-key kids tips for being responsible at home until their parents return. After she completed the training, Betsie began paying it forward and teaching other children and teens these same skills.
During the summer, Betsie and her team of Comets travel to community and daycare centers, libraries, and swimming pools, directly reaching 900 kids each year with life-saving messages that undoubtedly prevent hundreds of emergencies each year. When asked, Betsie couldn’t choose her favorite program to lead, although the puppet shows used to demonstrate hand washing and stranger safety ranked high on her list.
The smiles on kids’ faces, their raised hands with questions and gracious hugs after each lesson provide Betsie with significant reward. She is an exemplary role model, demonstrating responsibility, reliability, tolerance and compassion, for people of all ages.
So often adults have negative perceptions of teens’ work ethic, but Betsie is helping to dispel those myths by organizing her peers, scheduling the presentations, fundraising to support them and building the confidence and skills of children who depend on her.
Recently, Betsie has taken on even more responsibility by developing 23 new teenage trainers who will go on to reach dozens more children than she could alone. With her experience in Comets and on the local Red Cross Youth Council, she is leading new students through conflict-resolution and classroom management workshops to ready them for their first presentations.
Betsie’s work matters; the programs she teaches and the skills she promotes address the most common causes for unintentional death and injuries among children. With statistics like these from the National Safe Kids Campaign, we need more people like Betsie and her team of Comets:
- Each year, more than 830 children ages 14 and under die as a result of unintentional drowning.
- An average of 116,600 children are injured from a fire/burn-related incident, each year.
- Each year, more than 100 children ages 14 years and under die as a result of unintentional poisoning.
- Approximately 217,000 toy-related injuries are treated in hospital emergency rooms, each year.
- An estimated 14 million unintentional injuries are sustained by children each year less than 14 years of age. Of these injuries, 10 to 25 percent occur in and around schools.
Although she focuses on helping people avoid tragedies, she recognizes there may be a time when families are forced to face a significant disaster. Knowing that thousands may need to evacuate their homes following a flood or as a hurricane approaches land, Betsie hosted fundraisers to create kits, containing board games, crafts and toys, that can be placed at Red Cross shelters to keep kids calm and entertained.
The American Red Cross Tampa Bay Chapter, where she volunteers, had to find additional boxes because she collected more than enough puzzles, Teddy Bears and coloring books to fill the original kits. The extras will be used to comfort children who lose all of their toys to house and apartment fires that the Red Cross responds to each day. Her initiative was supported by hundreds of her classmates and will undoubtedly reduce the anxiety and fear disasters can cause in children’s lives. Even if she never has an opportunity to meet them, she knows she has made an impact.
According to the National Safe Kids Campaign’s study on safety role-modeling, children imitate the safety measures they see adults take. Similarly, children who learn safe behaviors from teachers and other role models actually encourage their parents to be safer. Betsie’s positive intervention and modeling of safe behaviors, such as never swimming alone, thoroughly washing your hands to avoid illness and saying “no” to rides from strangers is undoubtedly the saving lives of children and their parents.
While no one can say exactly how many lives she has saved or children she has comforted, it’s clear that Betsie is an inspiration to her peers. This year, the Comets program is booked solid with presentations based on her reputation and completely staffed with teens she has recruited. The kids never want her to leave and the teachers admire the way she connects with them in the classroom.
In her spare time, Betsie is learning Braille so that she can help other students who are vision-impaired participate in the Red Cross safety programs. After graduation, she hopes to attend a nearby university, apply her talents and become a certified teacher for special education programs.
Her volunteer spirit doesn’t just show itself in the summer months. Year-round Betsie is also training to work in hurricane shelters, collecting school supplies for low-income children, reading to families at the local library and forming a scholarship fund in memory of a classmate who was killed by a car while riding a skateboard.
Even though she never met Ashley Phillips, Betsie felt connected to her; Ashley was the granddaughter of the town’s Mayor, who helped Betsie establish the backpack drive. Betsie, who had been trained to help people cope with grief as a hospice volunteer, recognized that an endowment may help honor Ashley’s life and promote healing within the community. Soon she is hoping to supply a handful of graduating seniors with $1,000 each year for higher education in the area of veterinary science, her father’s profession and Ashley’s dream.
Instead of looking forward to time at the beach or the mall with friends, Betsie’s calendar is booked with projects that help the community. In the coming months, she hopes to organize a regional youth leadership conference, to raise funds for a new puppet show stage and van to transport the Comets to and from presentations, and to start a Red Cross club at her school.
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