DANIEL CAYCE

Daniel Cayce is a 16 year-old junior at Bearden High School. Daniel started a nutrition program that provides night and weekend meals to more than 60 needy students and their preschool siblings in his school district. He also distributed donations of school supplies; dental care products and food to the children of poor families as well as organizing an effort to provide fashionable, fun hats for mothers with cancer.

Inspired by President Bush and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s initiatives to “leave no child behind,” Daniel decided he could help by working to keep poor children from going to bed hungry at night. “I wanted no child in my school district to be left behind in nutrition,” he said. After compiling a list of the neediest students in his school district, Daniel solicited donations of food and backpacks through speeches to church and civic groups, letter-writing campaigns, and an appeal to the Arkansas State Food Bank. Donated food was then stored in a school gym, sorted and bagged with help from Daniel’s Boy Scout troop, and picked up by recipient students at the end of the school day.

Daniel also held a free give-away of baby food, school supplies and dental care products to more than 500 children last October, and delivered 2,000 pounds of baby food to human service agencies in three counties. And when his mother lost her hair during chemotherapy treatments, Daniel organized a group of seamstresses to make hats for more than 200 young mothers with cancer. Daniel won a Prudential Spirit of Community Award in 2003, as well, for a project that distributed blankets and cooking utensils to needy individuals during the winter.

Daniel has now delivered over 10,000 pounds of baby food and over 600 hats for moms with cancer.

Daniel was inducted into the Hall of Fame for caring Americans November 2004 Washington D.C. and today at the opening of the Clinton School for community service. Daniel was honored by David Pyor with a Daniel Cayce Award given each year to a student at the school.