She Did It!
Hard work helps foster teen find a way to make it to Obama’s inauguration
Sunday, January 18, 2009 3:36 AM
By Simone Sebastian
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Cierra Light, 17, and her foster mother, Vanessa McNeal, pack for Light’s trip to Washington for the presidential inauguration. She left yesterday with fellow students from Walnut Ridge High School.
ERIC ALBRECHT | DISPATCH
Cierra Light, 17, and her foster mother, Vanessa McNeal, pack for Light’s trip to Washington for the presidential inauguration. She left yesterday with fellow students from Walnut Ridge High School.
Barack Obama isn’t Cierra Light’s father, but she feels as if he is.
He has given her advice. He has encouraged her to pursue her dreams. He has inspired her to do things that others thought she couldn’t.
The 17-year-old foster child has never even met the president-elect, but he has changed her life.
Motivated by the grass-roots fundraising that characterized Obama’s early bid for the White House, Light embarked on her own campaign for Washington, D.C. She sold crafts she had made, wrote letters to potential donors and did odd jobs to raise the $1,000 she needed to get there.
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