Congratulations to Ithaca High School senior Sahana Bhaskaran for receiving the James L. Gibbs Scholarship Award from the Ithaca Rotary Club!
Sahana, who will attend Wellesley College next fall, served as an event leader at the high school's Student of Color Summit, which celebrates the racial identities of students and promotes interracial understanding through building community among students of color in the Ithaca City School District.
She also served as an intern with the Cornell Farmworkers Legal Clinic, which allowed her to see the fight for social justice firsthand while helping undocumented immigrants gain citizenship. "The justice I thought of as so natural - as something that could easily be gained through the demonstration of sacrifice and pain - was as rare as I thought it to be common," she said.
The James L. Gibbs Scholarship, which provides a $1,500 award, was created in 1981 to honor the legacy of Ithaca Rotarian James L. Gibbs, who became the first director of the Southside Community Center in 1937 and provided job training for adolescents and adults as well as recreational activities for children. After retiring, Mr. Gibbs became the first black member of the Ithaca Rotary Club and later its president.