The Chick-fil-A Leader Academy (CFALA) at the Ninth Grade Center currently has 25 members dedicated to serving the school and community. Students attend monthly meetings where they learn about leadership through labs. The program is completely sponsored by Chick-fil-A, they prepare the labs and provide all the materials. Students put into practice what they learn daily and work on community service projects. 

The purpose of the program is to teach high school students to be good leaders in their community. “It is an amazing year-long program where students attend different labs with different topics related to being leaders,” said Mayra Hook, NGC Spanish teacher and CFALA sponsor. “For example, the themes for this semester are vision and values, servant leadership, and teamwork.” 

Part of the program for Chick-fil-A Leader Academy is serving communities. The first service project of the year was “1 Million Book Away”. Chick-fil-A through CFALA donated the sets of books for younger students. Students packed individual kits and wrote notes to recipients. Then they had to distribute the books to children at any organization/school of our choice. 

The Frenship team decided to donate to a school in our community and another school outside our community. In this case, they decided to go to Willow Bend Elementary to serve the Frenship community.  

“Part of learning to be a leader is to serve and help others,” said Hook. “We wanted to make sure our students are involved with younger generations and to be exposed to new experiences in serving others. In this case, sharing the gift of literacy.” 

The Frenship CFALA donated about 50 sets of 5 books to Willow Bend. The rest of the books were donated to another community in México. Since the students are unable to attend the delivery in person, they wrote special notes on the sets for the abroad students. The CFALA members were excited to write to students from another country. 

The CFALA students will continue exhibiting The Frenship Way in their daily activities and community service projects next semester.