Whiz Kid: Katlyn Sansone

Each Wednesday, Mehlville Patch will be highlighting a young person in the community who is making a positive difference in the lives of others. These kids are doing outstanding academic work, winning an award or exhibiting exemplary qualities. Know great kids? Nominate them by e-mailing sarah.flagg@patch.com. 

Name: Katlyn Sansone

School: Mehlville High School

Age: 18

Accomplishment: Sansone used her skills in photography to create portraits and family albums for women at Our Lady’s Inn, a women’s shelter for homeless, pregnant women and their children.

Key to Awesomeness: When Sansone was deciding on a Gold Award project for Girl Scouts, she decided to combine two of her interests.

Sansone’s passion is photography and she plans to make a career out of it. This fall she will attend the University of Missouri-Columbia with a major in photography. When she is not taking pictures, she is often volunteering at Our Lady’s Inn, a shelter for homeless, pregnant women and their children, where she is a babysitter. Because she enjoys portrait photography, she created family photo albums for the women staying at the shelter.

Sansone realized that these moms generally do not have access to photography studios, but would love to have beautiful pictures of their children to treasure. Her idea for her Gold Award project began to take shape. She took portraits of mothers and their children and created albums for them, preserving the pictures as the family moved on to a permanent home.

The project was a great success, and Sansone earned her Gold Award along with many heartfelt thanks from the recipients of the albums. In addition, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri awarded her the honor of being one of their 2011 Girls of Distinction in the region, an honor only given to 10 girls. Her award was in creative arts, but maybe it should have been in “creative hearts.”