TOLEDO—Toledo St. Francis de Sales High School senior Jack Meyers was recently honored with the school’s Students in Action award for his work providing refurbished computers to needy children in the community.

Dave Schlaudecker, center, executive director and director of Community Leadership Toledo presents Eric Taylor, student leader, left, with the Jefferson Award Certificate for the school’s service and Jack Meyers, right, with this year's Students in Action Award for his outstanding community service. (Photo courtesy of Toledo St. Francis de Sales High School)

The Students in Action Award is a division of the Jefferson Award that recognizes those students who go above and beyond the time of service required of them.

“The Knight who was selected has devoted numerous hours to his community and established his own organization,” said Eric Taylor, the student leader coordinator for the nomination process of the award. “His dedication and passion to this work has benefited many of our disadvantaged youth in Toledo.”

In addition to creating the company Toledo Computer for Kids that refurbishes used computers for underprivileged students of the central city, Mr. Meyers served as captain of “Zip the Cure,” a national fundraiser for diabetes research, and has raised more than $17,000 one zip code at a time. Mr. Meyers himself suffers from juvenile diabetes, and has volunteered as an “Advocate for Action” meeting one-on-one with Ohio legislators to lobby for government funding for diabetes research. He represented Ohio at the Children’s Congress in Washington D.C., testifying before Congress for federal funding for diabetes research. He volunteered this past summer on a mission trip to Appalachia in West Virginia and has served as a camp counselor at Camp Little Shots, a day camp for children with diabetes.

Mr. Meyers has been accepted to the University of Notre Dame.

St. Francis was one of the first four schools in the region chosen to pilot the Students in Action program and in 2009 was recognized as the Jefferson Award volunteer school of Northwest Ohio. The program has grown to include 16 area high schools.

The Students in Action Program, formerly The Youth Service Initiative, was created in partnership with Deloitte with the aggressive goal of helping to double volunteerism in America’s high schools. The strategy is to create Jefferson Awards youth leadership teams in each high school that celebrate great volunteers, inspire others to get involved and help raise additional resources to expand volunteer activities in the areas of need.

St. Francis de Sales requires all students to complete a minimum 100 hours of community service before graduation as part of their Christian Service Program — 20 hours as a freshman and sophomore with a focus on family, extended family and the neighborhood in which they live and their parish or place of worship; 30 hours as a junior and senior with the focus expanding to local agencies such as soup kitchens, nursing homes, after school tutoring programs for at-risk students and finally becoming more person-to-person oriented, volunteering at hospice centers, muscular dystrophy camp, big brothers programs and tutoring programs.

“It has been my privilege this past year to assist our student leaders in their continued interest and energy in volunteerism beyond what our school requires of students,” said Kathleen Konnert, faculty moderator for Students in Action/Jefferson Awards.

“Over the past four years I have witnessed Jack Meyers come into his own as a quiet and humble leader while managing his own health concerns. He truly lives and exemplifies the words of our patron saint, Francis de Sales, ‘Be who you are and be that well,’ ” she added.

The Students in Action (SIA) program recognizes high school students for their extraordinary service to the community by presenting them with the Jefferson Award for Outstanding Community Service. Each school designs and implements the nomination, selection and promotion of the award winners. The most important step in the process is using the stories of these young students as inspiration for their peers to get more involved in service.