Lia Haile

High School Graduation Year: 2022
Year First Awarded the Carson Scholarship, School: 2020, Lincoln High School
Sponsored by: Carson Scholars Fund

Lia is a 3-time Carson Scholar who is currently a sophomore at Ripon College double-majoring in history and women’s and gender studies.  After graduation, she plans to attend law school and focus on human rights and humanitarian law.  Lia is dedicated to serving and helping the most vulnerable populations in her community.  In 2012, at just nine years old, Lia founded a service initiative called Hopeful Hearts Club.  It started as a birthday club that provided personalized birthday parties for children living in her community’s homeless shelter and Lia is extremely proud that, in over 12 years, the club has never missed a child’s birthday.  Today, the club has expanded and evolved to help hundreds of underserved youth and families in Manitowoc County, WI every year.  The club now also provides free STEM summer school classes, meals, school supplies, public transportation passes, holiday events and more to those in need living at the shelter.  Lia also serves on her county’s income-based housing community’s Learning Center’s Advisory Board.  She works to provide items to children entering foster care as part of the Backpack Buddies organization and, as a project coordinator for Kan Cool, Inc., she organizes a yearly donation drive to collect backpacks and school supplies for underserved youth in her county.  To date she has collected over 10,000 items.  In 2017, Lia won a grant through US Cellular’s Future of Good Program which enabled her to create a playroom in the basement of the homeless shelter, and this year she plans to fundraise to freshen up the space.

Lia shares her service journey by giving speeches and lectures to businesses, organizations, churches, schools, etc.  Recently, she presented one of the Lightning Talks at the National Youth Leadership Council’s annual service-learning conference and completed the Anti-Hunger Advocate Certification through the US Congressional Hunger Center.  She consistently fundraises, collaborates and writes grants in order to keep her programs and projects running.  Lia states that the mission statement of the Hopeful Hearts Club defines who she is and what she hopes to accomplish in her lifetime: “to provide every child enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, access to quality education, and hope for a better future.”