Middle School Students Make a Difference

　　Thirteen-year-old Sean Nathan throws a big birthday party every month.

　　But the Louisiana eighth-grader isn't celebrating the day he was born over and over again. Sean puts together parties for homeless kids who are staying in a shelter in his hometown of Shreveport.

　　Sean received the Prudential Spirit of Community Award last week for his volunteer service. As one of America's Top-Ten Youth Volunteers for 2009, he was invited to Washington, D.C., to receive his reward.

　　Sean and the nine other top youth volunteers were honored at a reception inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

　　The 10 national honorees each received $5,000, engraved gold medallions, crystal trophies for the schools or organizations that nominated them, and $5,000 grants from The Prudential Foundation to benefit the charities of their choice.

　　Sean has been hosting birthday parties once a month for the last two years at the Providence House Shelter. He got the idea while he and his brother, Neil, were singing Christmas carols at the Providence House shelter.

　　"Afterward, one of the kids told us that he never got to celebrate his birthday," said Sean. "I was just astonished because I thought all kids had birthday [parties]."