Many teens begin their summer vacation by hanging out at the pool or seeing a movie. But not Lissa Leibson. She will be traveling to Washington, D.C., next week to receive a special award from the United States Congress.
Lissa, who will be a senior at The Barstow school when school begins in August, decided to take part in the Congressional Award Program, a program open to American students ages 14 to 23, because she likes to be challenged.
“I wanted to stretch myself by setting a long term goal, working toward it, and then achieve it. I’d also been doing a lot of community service before starting the award program, but after signing up for the award, I finally had a goal in mind for my community service.”
Lissa has earned a gold award and will travel to Washington, D.C., with her mother Andrea Poisner-Corchine and her grandfather, Eugene Leibson, to receive it. The ceremony will be held Wednesday, June 19, at the Cannon House Building on Capitol Hill. The ceremonies are divided by state, and each will include a color guard presentation, invocation, speakers, and a brief introduction of each medalist as they receive their medals. Congressmen from each state present the medals to their state’s award recipients.
Participants can earn recognition in the Bronze, Silver and Gold categories. The average number of Bronze Medals awarded per year is roughly 2,500, Silver Medals average 1,200 and Gold Medals average 250 to 275. For the local area, Kansas has eight gold medalists, six silver medalists and eight bronze medalists.
The Congressional Award Program consists of four parts: Volunteer Public Service, Personal Development, Physical Fitness, and Expedition/Exploration. Participants are required to set goals in each of the four areas.
Lissa believes she had a truly rewarding experience in each area.
Lissa’s goal in the Volunteer Public Service category was to improve the lives of children in the Kansas City area. In order to complete this goal, she volunteered with Cancer Action, with gym classes in Barstow’s lower school, The Ronald McDonald House, Operation Breakthrough and Summer at Barstow.
“Volunteering at Summer at Barstow Camp was where I first discovered my passion for working with younger kids,” Lissa said. “Being an only child and not knowing any kids in my old neighborhood, I have grown up mostly around adults. So, working with kids was out of my comfort zone. However, I learned to love working with younger kids and I have subsequently volunteered there each summer. I helped out in a variety of classes including sports, art and math programs. While volunteering, I also learned a lot from the campers, such as how to play the Pokémon card game and the alluring qualities of Silly Bandz.”
For Personal Development, she chose playing the piano and gardening with her parternal grandfather, Eugene Leibson.
“When I was in lower school, my grandpa and I started having a garden,” Lissa said. “However, I only helped out when it was time to pick our crops. As I got older, I wanted to have the satisfaction of knowing that I could grow my own food. I began researching the best kinds of crops to grow, planted, weeded and watered throughout the summer. The most rewarding part was after so many hours of watering and weeding, I finally got to eat the food that I grew.”
In the area of physical fitness, Lissa set her goal to learn to play tennis. She accomplished this goal with two different activities, practicing and conditioning. A secondary goal was to be selected her school’s junior varsity tennis team as a junior.
“To achieve this goal, I began taking tennis lessons during the off-season and even did a bit of conditioning to stay in shape,” Lissa said. “Unfortunately, toward the beginning of the season during my sophomore year, I pulled a muscle in my hip and was out for most of the season. However, I continued to take year-round lessons off-season. During the tennis season of my junior year, I played in the top four positions at each match. I also participated in the Sixth Annual JV Northtown Invitational in 2012 and our team placed first. I plan to make the Varsity team my senior year.”
For her exploration trip, Lissa decided to go to Israel with NCSY’s TJJ program.
“One of my favorite experiences was when we went to volunteer at an organization called Chazon Yish’aya,” she said. “This organization helps feed homeless people in Israel and also helps them find work. The day we were volunteering we were with another group of regular volunteers. I helped by washing and cutting onions to be put in the soup and by carrying watermelons to the room where other people cut them. The regular volunteers could barely speak English, and most of the teens on my trip could barely speak Hebrew. However, it was amazing how even though both groups of volunteers came from different cultures and spoke different languages, we could still come together and work toward the same goal: providing a positive impact on the local community.”
As she was able to relate a personal experience in every category, Lissa earned the highest honor, the Congressional Gold Award.
Getting involved is nothing new for Lissa. As a member of Congregation Beth Shalom and part of the Confirmation Class of 2012, she has taken part in several local Jewish group activities.
She is in BBG’s Saadia chapter as well as a part of Kansas City’s NCSY youth group. She enjoys NCSY for the social aspects and the sense of Jewish heritage it brings to her life.
“I love NCSY because I used to go to HBHA when I was in lower school, and since leaving I’d felt as though I was losing my connection to Judaism,” she said. “But NCSY has helped me connect with Judaism again. I love hanging out with and learning from other kids who are so passionate about Judaism.”
Lissa said she would not have been able to complete all the requirements and be recognized as a congressional gold medalist without the support of her family — her mom and step-dad (Andrea Poisner-Corchine and Robert Corchine), her dad and step-mom (David Leibson and Barbara Kovacs), her maternal grandparents (Lorraine Chadwick and Rita and Larry Poisner) and her paternal grandfather (Eugene Leibson).
