The Youth Center honors 12-Year-Old Stellar Volunteer, Davis Taylor

Pictured above from left to right: Davis Taylor, his mother, Charisma Reyes and his sister in front.

As reported last week, The Youth Center recently recognized four extraordinary youth volunteers by surprising them at their homes. Today, we focus on Davis Taylor, a Los Alamitos resident nominated by the Seal Beach Leos.

Davis was recognized for his passion for helping and volunteering, even during a pandemic. He continually found ways to help not only his community, but his classmates as well. Davis is a Director in the Seal Beach Leo club, and is the one Leo who consistently stepped up to volunteer his time in the few projects the Leos had the opportunity to do since the beginning of the pandemic.

“Davis’s passion for doing community service dates back to when he was 4 years old and he would help us with beach clean ups while we lived in Hawaii,” said his mother, Charisma Reyes.

This last year, Davis collected shoes for the Youth Center’s shoe drive, set up a food collection on his front steps for the Lion’s district wide food drive, (collecting 800 pounds of food), worked the Lion’s Breakfast with Santa project, labored tirelessly at the Youth Center tree lot drive, hung posters for the Lion’s Pasta drive, and consistently attended Leo meetings.

One of Davis’s passions is helping little children. Davis is a volunteer at the Mary Wilson library, reading to kindergarten children; something he will continue to do when time allows during the school year. Davis’s other passion is video editing. He is in his school’s choir and because there were no in-person practices, Davis recorded the zoom call practice sessions with the choir members and then compiled all the students singing into one cohesive video. He also recommended that all the choir members record themselves practicing and send him their practice videos, which he again compiled into one video, adding virtual backgrounds and editing to near-perfection. Davis has also begun helping his kindergarten sister with assembling various videos for her monthly assignments. For his elective class this coming school year, Davis chose leadership.

“Davis is a truly exceptional young man with a natural desire to volunteer and serve. He has a wonderful imagination, a great attitude, and a spectacular personality,” said Lina Lumme, executive director of The Youth Center.

“Davis is destined for great adventures in life,” she said.

For more information about the A Night Among the Stars event or to nominate an outstanding youth volunteer for 2022, visit www.theyouthcenter.org/a-night-among-the-stars. The Youth Center is a non-profit organization whose mission is to transform children’s lives one family at a time through collaborative social, educational and recreational programs.

Since the birth of the Youth Center in 1952, The Youth Center has been honored to establish valuable partnerships within the community and acknowledges their critical importance in the organization’s current and future success. For more information, call (562) 493-4043 or visit www.TheYouthCenter.org.