The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District held a Board of Education meeting Monday night. Heather Marron, a representative with Alaska Communications presented the Alaska Communications Youth Hero Award to Miss Selena Payment, who attends River City Academy. The 16-year-old initiated a program in her hometown of Soldotna to provide personal hygiene kits to those in transition of experiencing homelessness. She also is raising a puppy in a 16-month service dog training program.
Payment spoke with KSRM back in August explaining the program:
“The main things I did were I made and sent out hygiene kids for the homeless and in transition. I am also raising a volunteer service puppy. They include soap, toothbrushes, flossers, q-tips, all of the hygiene, basic hygiene supplies that someone would need, and that they might not have access to if they were homeless or in transition and I distribute those at the Kenai Peninsula foodbank and the Kenai Methodist Church.”
Payment speaks on the reasoning behind wanting to create the program:
“There’s several needs in the community that are being met or aren’t being met. Many of those are housing or food and I realized there was a lack of support around hygiene and so I decided that it’s something that I would like to take on and I would like to help meet those needs by making hygiene kids and distributing them for those that are needed.”
Over 700 kits have been made thus far, and Payment said that putting them together requires money. She explained:
“The first couple of years I did it on my own and I bought and purchased and was donated supplies that I could use to put these kits together and I finally realized I could not do this on my own so I went to the Kenai Lions Club and presented my project and asked if they would sponsor me and they sponsored me for my hygiene kits.”
In talking about the service dog training program, Payment spoke on its most important aspect:
“It is socializing them to places that they might to when they are older such as stores and businesses and the post office and things such as airplanes and public transportation, which we don’t have here, so it’s also our job to go somewhere such as Anchorage and ride the busses and take him on a plane and places that he will go when he is older.
Alaska Communications selected Payment as a Summer Hero, an outstanding youth who are making a difference in their local communities. Payment received a $1,500 scholarship and recognition in the local community.
Click here to listen to Payment’s entire interview with Merrill Sikorski from August 20th.