NEWS

Amelia Wyatt

​High school senior Amelia Wyatt from Davidson was awarded the 2020 Claes Nobel Future Female Leader Scholarship by the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS). Scholarship winners demonstrated outstanding leadership skills in their schools and communities. NSHSS offered ten scholarships to young women assuming future leadership roles in their colleges, universities, careers, and communities, and becoming mentors for the young women following in their footsteps. Amelia graduated from the Cannon School in Concord, North Carolina and will attend Duke University in the fall.

In eighth grade, Amelia began working for La Escuelita, a bilingual (Spanish/English) dual immersion preschool program that helps Hispanic children of lower socioeconomic status prepare for preschool and long-term success in the education system. Through volunteering, Amelia saw the benefits of empowering the Hispanic community, but by the end of her freshman year, the program was running out of funding. So she wrote a children’s book, in both Spanish and English, about a bird named Ozzie who experiences the difficulties as an immigrant (a story she had learned first-hand with the children and parents of La Escuelita). Her book, Ozzie and the Island, raised $110,000 for La Escuelita’s honor, where Amelia continues to support her Hispanic community.

To give you some background on the organization that awarded Amelia the scholarship, NSHSS is the premier international honors and scholarship program co-founded by Claes Nobel and James Lewis. It offers a lifetime of benefits, pairing the highest performing students worldwide with high school and college scholarships, events, connections, internships, and career opportunities that begin in high school and carry on through college and careers. For more information, visit the website.