Fresh Meadows girl wins UN group prize

A Fresh Meadows girl has won the top prize in a national high school competition sponsored by the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) for an essay on AIDS.
Jiyoon Jenny Han, who is a junior at prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, was one of hundreds of students across the country who submitted essays on the topic: What can the US do to help combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases around the world?
Thirty-nine UNA-USA chapters around the country submitted the winning essay in their area for final judging. The results were announced at the Annual UNA-USA Members Day at the United Nations on Saturday, April 5, where members from all over the United States attended.
Han received a plaque and an honorarium of $2,000 from Ambassador William Luers, the president of the group.
The essays took the form of a letter to President Bush answering the questions:
Why is combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases so important?
What should the United States do to ensure that Millennium Development Goal Six will be reached by 2015?
The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals approved by the leaders of the developed nations at the Millennium Summit in 2000, which aim to halt or begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
Han spoke to the several hundred UNA-USA members at the annual event about her interest in HIV/AIDS.
She is also the president of a foundation that she founded to assist people suffering from HIV/AIDS, and she will contribute her honorarium to that foundation.
The foundation will also benefit from a concert to be held at Carnegie Hall in October. Han also attends the Manhattan School of Music.