LifeSmarts recognizes student scholarship recipients from ‘Year of Health and Safety’ project – National Consumers League

August 14, 2018

Media contact: National Consumers League – Carol McKay, carolm@nclnet.org, (412) 945-3242 or Taun Sterling, tauns@nclnet.org, (202) 207-2832

Washington, DC—LifeSmarts, a national consumer literacy educational program and scholarship opportunity for students in grades 6-12, has announced this year’s student leaders who have been awarded scholarships for their outstanding participation in the LifeSmarts OTC Medicine Safety Mentoring Project, a program offered during LifeSmarts’ Year of Health and Safety.

The OTC Medicine Safety Mentoring Project was unveiled in 2017 and offered as a community service opportunity to this year’s LifeSmarts participants and was underwritten by a grant from Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. Through the program, LifeSmarts provided materials and curriculum, bolstered by educational resources produced by Scholastic, that enabled high school students to become mentors for middle school students to help them understand the wise use and safe storage of over-the-counter medicines.

“We are so pleased with the success of the ‘Year of Health and Safety’ and the OTC Medicine Safety Mentoring Project,” said national LifeSmarts Program Director Lisa Hertzberg. “We know LifeSmarts gives students the skills they need to succeed as adults, and we see students applying what they learn immediately at home and in their communities. We were thrilled to see our students participate in this program and the enthusiasm and creativity they exhibited in serving as student mentors to pre-teens on these crucial health and safety lessons.”

2018 Safety Mentoring Scholarship Winners

More than 500 LifeSmarts students participated in the program making presentations and holding events that reached tens of thousands of middle school students and community members across the country. Student participants submitted applications about their experiences to the National Consumers League. Scholarship criteria included the number of presentations, community impact, and a personal reflective statement, with the winners receiving a $1,000 post-secondary education scholarship. This year’s recipients are:

  • Victoria Lowrance: LaFayette, GA (12th grade)
  • Samantha Martinez: Waterbury, CT (10th grade)
  • Kejsi Ozuni: Waterbury, CT (10th grade)
  • Raymond Perez: Dallas, PA (11th grade)
  • Hannah Wolfe: Dallas, PA (10th grade)

Besides health and safety, LifeSmarts focuses on four other main content areas: consumer rights and responsibilities, personal finance, technology, and the environment. Students are quizzed on their knowledge of these subject areas during online competition. Top-performing teams then advance to statewide competitions, and state champion teams advance to the national championship held each year in a different American city. The 2018 National LifeSmarts Championship took place April 21-24 in San Diego, where the state champion team from Pennsylvania was declared this year’s national champion team. Scholarship recipients Raymond Perez and Hannah Wolfe were on this year’s national champion team.

Last year, students answered more than 3.5 million consumer questions about credit reports, recycling, nutrition, social media, state lemon laws, and everything in between. More than 140,000 students participated in the program in the 2017-18 season. LifeSmarts is active in all states and the District of Columbia, where NCL is headquartered.

“Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. is proud to be a long-standing supporter of the LifeSmarts program and thrilled about the OTC Medicine Safety Mentoring project. As a manufacturer of over-the-counter medicines, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. believes that the LifeSmarts OTC Medicine Safety Mentoring Project can help instill a healthy respect for all medicines in adolescents by teaching core concepts on the responsible use and safe storage of medicines. In doing so, we are building a healthier future for our adolescents, and helping to prevent medicine misuse, errors, and adverse events,” said Ed Kuffner M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Johnson & Johnson Consumer.

Visit LifeSmarts.org for more information.

LifeSmarts: Learn it. Live it.

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About LifeSmarts

LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League. State coordinators run the programs on a volunteer basis. For more information, visit: LifeSmarts.org, email lifesmarts@nclnet.org, or call the National Consumers League’s communications department at (202) 835-3323.

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.