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Tuesday, February 12, 2008 7:44 AM PST
By Denise Holley
Eighth-grader Eduardo (Eddie) Siordia of Rio Rico is a patriot who believes in "paying it forward."
Siordia, a student at Desert Shadows Middle School, has had quite a school year. He was elected president of the eighth-grade class in August. At a leadership institute last fall, he and the student council learned to perform an act of kindness and "pay it forward" to spread their actions around the community.
In January, the essay Siordia wrote for the Patriot's Pen Essay Contest took second place in the state.
"Every action I do for my country is for the greater good," Siordia wrote in his essay.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars sponsors the contest for students in sixth through eighth grades to express their views on democracy, said Chris Kozakiewicz, state chairman for the contest.
VFW Post 2066 in Nogales gave its first prize to Siordia's essay in November, and then the essay won the district contest. Siordia went to Yuma on Jan. 19 for the state competition, where he took second place, Kozakiewicz said.
Siordia accepted his award at the 2008 Annual Becwar Memorial Voice of Democracy Banquet that evening, he said. He won $900 in prize money.
Matthew Munhall of Phoenix won first place and will go on to the national competition, Kozakiewicz said.
When he reaches high school, Siordia wants to enter the VFW's Voice of Democracy contest and compete for college scholarships, he said.
While his essay made its way up the VFW ladder, Siordia and the other 44 students in the student council class put their new leadership skills to work, said faculty adviser Liz Siordia. She is Eddie's mother and a math and science teacher at Desert Shadows.
The leadership institute taught students to "do something positive and unselfish," said Joan Molera, principal of Desert Shadows. "This tends to be an age when they don't always think of others."
The concept of "Pay It Forward" grew out of a book of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde and a movie released in 2000. In the drama, a 12-year-old boy starts a movement to repay a good turn with a generous act toward three other people, so kindness ripples out to the community.
At an emotional ceremony in late November, the students graduated from the leadership institute and described their projects to parents and school staff, Molera said.
Elizabeth Medina wanted to bake at the Ronald McDonald House in Tucson, where families stay while their seriously ill children get treatment at nearby hospitals. Medina organized a crew of students to go with her for several Saturdays, Liz Siordia said. They got the whole school to collect non-perishable food and donate other items on the Ronald McDonald House wish list.
David De La Fuente brought clothing and blankets to a family in Nogales, Sonora, plus medicine for their sick child, according to Liz Siordia. Mireya Fernandez helped her aunt after back surgery and showed a video that explained how a medical device enabled her aunt to control pain and walk again.
For his project, Eddie Siordia developed a peer-tutoring program for students who had to leave student council because their grades had fallen. His project expressed "the flight of the geese" concept the students learned in the institute. If one member falls, the others have a duty to help until he or she is ready to rejoin the flock.
"Since I saw how the peer tutoring was working, I imagined how much better the district would work if we had to 'pay it forward,'" Siordia said.
He spoke to the Nogales Unified School District school board on Nov. 14 about extending the '"Pay it Forward" concept to the entire district.
"This program is about altruism and how we can help us, the students, to be aware of the outside world and the suffering that goes on," Siordia said.
At Desert Shadows, student council members are uniting to come up with an anti-bullying project, Molera said. "They're thinking things through. We're seeing positive results."
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