Four McLean Students Honored for Amazing Community Service

The Rotary Club of McLean honors four McLean high school seniors today for their outstanding community service.

The students from each of McLean's four high schools will receive $400 scholarships for their commitment to serving the community and exemplifying Rotary ’s guiding principle of ‘Service Above Self”.

The awards will take place the  club’s noon meeting at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer on Chain Bridge Road. The 2011 Youth Service Award Winners are:

Madeline AuBuchon, Senior, The Potomac School is a co-leader of The Potomac School’s Community Service Club. In this role, she organizes events, collects donations, arranges free-dress fundraisers, publicizes community service events and works with local organizations to open events to students. Maddie tutors elementary school-age children at the Herndon Resource Center. She helps with lessons, projects and homework assignments for students for whom English is a second language. Maddie also has helped organize The Potomac School’s “Senior Prom.” Additionally, she works with other students in setting, participating in and cleaning up after a dance for senior citizens at a day-care center for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. Maddie also has organized The Potomac School’s Christmas in April project. She has conducted initial site visits, shopped for and organized supplies, recruited and organized volunteers and worked to provide needed repairs and improvements for elderly homeowners.

Rachel Begeman, Senior, The Madeira School  is Madeira’s “can-do, will-do, got-it-done” student. She uses the school’s Monday all-student meetings to announce the next fundraising activity or community service project. These activities have included school supply drives, volunteer trips to the local food banks, fundraising for the Special Olympics and Best Buddies and placing wreaths on graves in Arlington National Cemetery. As co-head of the school’s Community Service Committee, Rachel has organized book drives and other service projects. But perhaps more importantly, Rachel is causing change in the attitude of donors and participants. She instills a genuine, life-long commitment to serve others. Rachel and her family also have raised service dogs for Canine Companions for Independence for several years.

Bijan Peters, Senior, McLean High School is a charismatic, conscientious and focused student leader. He has demonstrated the vision and organizational skills to take an idea and implement a plan of action on a large scale. Specifically, he organized McLean High’s effort to package food to feed 100,000 people in the community’s Stop Hunger Now event. Bijan was instrumental in raising McLean High’s share of the $25,000 needed for the event and integral in encouraging participation by area community groups, churches and other school. Bijan united the McLean community through this charity event and maintained focus on the benefit to those who will be served by the Stop Hunger Now program.

Zoe Tseng, Senior, Langley High School is a dedicated public servant, who has been involved in charity work throughout her high school career and has consistently put the needs of her various volunteer activities above her own. Zoe dedicates much of her weekends to organizing clothing and food drives for the homeless and low-income families in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Baltimore and West Virginia. Zoe volunteers one weekend a month at the Baltimore Salvation Army Booth House, assembling groups to accompany her in assembling and distributing hot dinners to those individuals who live on Baltimore’s streets. Additionally, with the support of Evergreen Senior Care, she has organized the preparation of Thanksgiving food baskets and back-to-school backpack packages for low-income families. Zoe also organizes an annual winter clothing drive as well as monthly canned food and living necessity drives that are distributed by several organizations.

Founded in November 1965 the Rotary Club of McLean comprises 60 business and community leaders dedicated to providing humanitarian service, encouraging high ethical standards in all vocations and helping to build goodwill and peace in the world. The McLean Club is one of more than 33,000 Rotary clubs—with more than 1.2 million members—located in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Web site: