Distinguished Finalist

Nashawn Stevens, 17, of Upper Arlington, Ohio, a senior at Walnut Ridge High School, is an avid community volunteer who has risen beyond homelessness and despair in his own life to help others who are facing the problems that he once faced. Nashawn, an active member of the Youth Empowerment Program with the Volunteers of America Youth Education Center for the past eight years, also mentors young people in transition from homelessness, has distributed care packages to a homeless camp in Columbus, and has traveled to the nation's capital to work with the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.