Friday, June 22, 2012
The Ridgewood News
Today, nearly 200 Cambodian children, who
might otherwise be begging on the street or searching for food in dumps,
are getting an education. And that's partly because of Ridgewood High School (RHS) senior Emilie Louizides.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF LOUIZIDES FAMILY
Emilie Louizides, far right, credits her sister, Julia, and her
parents with support for her humanitarian endeavors.
Emilie receives a hug from her friend, Roat, at the Ridgewood Village School in Cambodia.
As a former co-president of the Cambodia Rural School
Project at Benjamin Franklin (BF) Middle School and one of the leaders
of the RHS Cambodia Club, Louizides helped build a school in a rural
Cambodian village.
The "Ridgewood
Village School," which was completed in 2009, now serves more than 180
children in a country still recovering from a genocide that took place
in the 1970s.
"A lot of kids [in Cambodia] work in the dumps to support
their families. They dig for food … or they go out and beg," said
Louizides, who visited Cambodia for the school's dedication.
"These kids are catching up now. They're the new generation of education," she added.
Because of this and other social projects, the senior is
this year's winner of the Varian Fry Humanitarian Scholarship, an award
that has honored a socially engaged RHS senior each year since 2002.
The award also honors the memory of Ridgewood's
hometown hero Varian Fry, who helped more than 2,000 artists, writers,
philosophers and their families escape from Nazi-dominated Vichy France
in the early 1940s.
The Cambodia Rural School Project might be her biggest
endeavor, but it is hardly Louizides' only altruistic project. Since
middle school, she has volunteered to work with children with
disabilities at Camp Sunshine at the Duck Pond, fundraised to support
women who are victims of domestic violence, and attended rallies in
Washington D.C. and New York City to bring attention to the situation in
Darfur.
Louizides — who has a dog, two cats, three rabbits, a mouse
and a fish as pets — is a big animal lover and has also volunteered at
several shelters.
In the summer of 2009, just months after returning from Cambodia, she helped renovate a food pantry in Paterson.
Still, she said the school in Cambodia — which she has worked to finance with many other Ridgewood
students, including those in the RHS Cambodia Club and in the Cambodia
Rural School Project clubs at BF and George Washington Middle School —
is definitely her longest project and her biggest source of pride.
Thanks to her help with fundraising about $40,000, the
Cambodian students now have not just a basic schoolhouse but also a
cook, trained English teacher, vegetable garden, computers, solar panels
and a generator.
"It was pretty amazing," Louizides said of seeing the school in person. "I met a lot of the students."
Catherine Taub, founder of the Committee to Honor Varian Fry, helped pick Louizides from nearly 50 other applicants.
According to Taub, the scholarship honors students who
demonstrate the same "commitment to care" that Fry did years ago.
Louizides has shown that commitment, she said.
"What struck me is she's been doing this for years," Taub said. "It's very varied, but the core is caring."
Louizides said that Fry embodied what "humanitarianism"
means to her, because he had "three key factors" — selflessness,
integrity and humility.
However, Fry is not Louizides' only humanitarian role model. She has people to look to for inspiration in her immediate family.
Her mother is a news anchor who has made documentaries about
social-justice issues, while her father helps people as a surgeon.
Meanwhile, her younger sister Julia has taken over her former role as
co-leader of the Cambodia Rural School Project at BF.
"My parents are really good people, and they've always
wanted to do things for other people," she said. "I think that just kind
of rubbed off on me and my sister. The four of us have been running
with that ever since."
After graduation, the senior will attend Savannah College of
Art and Design in Georgia, where she plans to major in fashion and
minor in musical theater, but her social action won't stop there. She
wants to return to Cambodia to "be with the kids and hang out with
them," she said.
She also hopes to one day design a clothing line for
children with an extremely rare disease called "progeria." The disease
affects about 90 kids around the world and causes accelerated aging.
"They don't have clothes that really fit them," she explained.
Taub said she loves how the Varian Fry scholarship, which offers a "modest monetary gift," brings attention to individuals in Ridgewood who perform humanitarian acts that otherwise might not receive the same attention as excellence in sports or academics.
When she first began the scholarship, Taub thought she would receive only a few submissions, but then they began pouring in.
Other winners have included a student who volunteered and
played baseball with boys in the Dominican Republic, an Eagle Scout who
helped create a series of books for autistic children, and a student who
raised thousands of dollars for Haitian orphans.
"It's just an outstanding experience to realize what great
people there are," Taub said. "I remember [past] recipients who I talk
about to this day … It just brings chills — a high school student did
that?"
For people who are intrigued by social action but don't know where to start, Louizides shared some advice.
"Think of something that you're passionate about," she said.
"If [you] love animals, do something with that. If [you] love sports,
volunteer with an after-school daycare place with special needs kids and
incorporate it with sports … like what I'm doing with fashion."
Email: herzogl@northjersey.com
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