Villa Rica High School senior and current Beta Club president, Donna Phillips, was awarded the John W. Harris Leadership Award this past weekend at the Georgia Senior Beta Convention. The John W. Harris Leadership Award is one way that the National Beta Club recognizes outstanding leadership exhibited by its junior and senior members. The award is named in honor of The National Beta Club’s beloved founder and provides national recognition to 50 of The National Beta Club’s most deserving members. Each year sponsors may nominate a member who best exemplifies the ideal of leadership, and then 25 National Beta Club members and 25 National Junior Beta Club members are chosen as recipients and will receive a leadership award, certificate, and paid tuition to attend the Broyhill Leadership Conference the following summer.

Donna has been a member of the Beta Club since fourth grade when she was inducted into the Junior Beta Club. In fifth grade, she competed in the quiz bowl competition and art competition in crossstitching at the Junior Beta Convention in Macon and received the President’s Award the same year. In addition to cheering on the Wildcats at VRMS in football and basketball her seventh and eighth grade years, Donna received a firstplace award for a website she created about the Georgia Drought. Donna was inducted into the Senior Beta Club the spring of her freshman year at VRHS. During her high school career she has been an AP and Honors student found success in many different areas.

She was inducted into the French National Honors Society her sophomore year, the National Honors Society her junior year, and receiving the Accounting Award from Mrs. Charmaine Barnhill her junior year. As the Beta Club president, Donna not only leads her club by serving others through group community service projects such as cleaning the VRHS campus and operating a soup kitchen in the VRHS cafeteria, but she also has many other philanthropic endeavors that she devotes her personal time to. She currently volunteers in the lunchroom at Providence Elementary School where she also decorates the entire inside of the lunch lines and she volunteers at their Valentine’s Day dance, where she serves food and interacts with parents and children. During the holiday season she makes cards for Ashbrook Village, a local assisted living community, and year-round she donates meal bags for families who need food and donates clothes to students at various schools who need them.

However, the one thing that is probably nearest to Donna’s heart is the work that she does with Children’s Healthcare at Egleston. For Donna, this is not just about providing community service, this is personal. Upon waking up one morning in May of her eighth grade year, Donna could not breathe or stand up. Her mother rushed her to Tanner Medical Center in Villa Rica where the doctor called for an X-ray, blood work, and a CT scan. The X-ray showed a pocket of fluid, while the scan showed a tumor. The doctor then told her that she needed to go to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. Upon arrival, the doctors and nurses were waiting on her and as soon as she walked through the door, she was immediately admitted. Later that night, her surgeon came in and told her that she would be having a major surgery within the next two days. After being poked and prodded with needles, her lifesaving surgery came and she had a teratoma tumor, the size of a volleyball and weighing 1.5 pounds, removed. The doctors and pathologists considered it a childhood cancer and luckily it was benign. Through a long, painful recovery, Donna began to realize how special every single employee was in that hospital. She also met so many great kids who, even though they were sick, were still smiling and she realized how special those kids were, too. After a full recovery and two years of X-rays as a precautionary measure, she knew she had to give back. In the fall of her junior year, she created what is known as “The Box Project”. Each holiday season she sets boxes out in every classroom at VRHS and throughout one of the middle schools and collects brand new toys for the children who would not get to go home for the holidays. Although this has a very personal meaning to her, Donna plans on taking a group of people with her each Christmas to share in the caring and giving.

Although Donna has accomplished much as a VRHS student, she is not one who enjoys being in the spotlight. Her actions and her deeds are done without much fanfare and she would just as soon stand in the background than be recognized openly. As Donna’s senior year draws to a close she is focused on her future. After graduating with honors, Donna plans on attending the University of West Georgia where she will enroll in prepharmacy courses and then complete her PhD in Pharmacy at Mercer University.