Junior Leadership Akron Exposes High Schoolers To Areas Of The City

Talk to people around Akron’s Summit Lake and you’ll see everything they imagine it to be: A hub for outdoor activity, a place for families to spend the day or even a future location for a small amusement park.Eric Smith, a volunteer coordinator for Junior Leadership Akron (JLA), took students in the program on a trip to Summit Lake on a recent Tuesday to hear about revitalization efforts underway at the lake and surrounding neighborhood, which faces problems with vacant and abandoned homes.That’s a large part of what the JLA program is all about — exposing area high school students to the Akron community so they can see what’s going on and develop visions of their own.“It’s not a shortage of money,” Smith said of other revitalization opportunities in the Akron area.