CHATHAM — Curie High School junior Jemmont Ransom holds nearly a 4.0 grade point average, loves fixing computers and aspires to launch his own private security company.
Ransom will share his school experience with hundreds at an annual Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago competition on Tuesday. The 2015 Youth of the Year Competition will be held in the Navy Pier Grand Ballroom, 600 E. Grand Avenue.
Ransom, 17, a Chatham resident, is one of eight finalists who will talk about their lives and how their neighborhood club helped them overcome obstacles. Ransom has been an active member of the Louis Valentine Club in Bridgeport since he was five.
The multi-talented youth said that over the last 12 years, it was only natural for the workers and other youths at the club to become like family.
“This is where I picked up my first football, this is where I got interested in computers,” Ransom said. “[They’re] basically my family, it’s like my second home."
The finalists, selected based on their leadership skills, will be judged on a speech they'll deliver as well as three essays for the competition, held annually by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago. This year the finalists come from clubs located in Little Village, Pilsen, Logan Square, Bridgeport, Near West Side and Uptown.
The Youth of the Year Program seeks active club participants who demonstrate leadership and service, said Jim Keane, the clubs’ president and CEO. Many of the young people they work with come from communities or homes where the kids aren’t supported or encouraged. That’s where the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago comes in, Keane said.
“We try to provide that hope and so this program helps bring out the leadership potential in youth like that,” he said.
“When they sign up and say, ‘I want to be a candidate for Youth of the Year,’ they’re really putting themselves on the line and saying, ‘I want to have the courage to do this,’ and they have a lot of help in terms of people encouraging them,” Keane said.
At the Louis Valentine Club in Bridgeport, Ransom tutors the younger members, helps with computer training and speaks to interested parents about the club.
Even though he lives in Chatham, he attended James Ward Elementary in the Bridgeport neighborhood. His mother needed a place for him to go after school so, based on a referral from another parent, she sent her son to the Bridgeport club.
Ransom comes from a single-parent home so he spent much of his time after school at the Valentine Club, while his mother was at work. He said that when he was younger, one of the club’s gym teachers encouraged him to play flag football. That boosted his confidence and got him interested in trying other sports like basketball and swimming. He tried out for his high school’s baseball team freshman year and made the cut.
Besides sports, Ransom enjoys working on computers. After he gets his associate’s degree, he wants to get his Bachelor’s in Computer Science and go to law school before starting his private security company, he said.
If he wins the competition on Tuesday, he will move to the state competition, which is held in Schaumburg next month.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
