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Clay Aiken: North Carolina
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Clay Aiken was born November 30, 1978 in Raleigh, NC, which is proud to call him their own. He graduated from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte with a Special Education degree in December 2003.
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Aiken has made four trips for UNICEF. In March 2005, he went to the tsunami-stricken Banda Aceh area to raise awareness of the need to restore education quickly to the children who survived this disaster, in order to provide stability in a time of great loss.[60] UNICEF sent Aiken on another mission in May 2005, to northern Uganda, to witness the plight of children called "night commuters", who flee the villages each night to sleep in streets and shelters in hopes of avoiding being kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army. UNICEF sent him to Kabul and Bamyan in Afghanistan in April 2007 where he was able to spend time with children in their classrooms; he ... visited a health center for women and children where he administered oral Polio vaccinations to babies. He observed that Afghani children, after being forbidden for so many years by the Taliban regime to attend school, are eager to return to school now that they are once again allowed to receive an education. Aiken also visited the Said Aabad women’s literacy centre in Bamyan, where girls and women from ages 16 to 50 are learning to read and write for the first time.[61] Just before leaving Afghanistan, Aiken launched the "$100,000 in 10 days" campaign to support UNICEF efforts in that country, a campaign that raised a total of over $180,000.[62] Aiken spent his 2007 Christmas in Mexico with the children affected by the floods in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.[63][64]
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Aiken dropped his music career... in college. He opted to be a Special Education major at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He had hopes of eventually attending the prestigious William & Mary College in Virginia in order to attain a Master's Degree in Administration.
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Aiken appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone a month before Studdard. His first single, "This Is The Night," backed with his cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," debuted at No. 1, one position ahead of Studdard's "Flying Without Wings," when both songs bowed on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2002. Not bad for a 24-year-old former camp counselor from Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Aiken grew up in North Carolina and released three demo albums before auditioning for American Idol. While the singer was written off as a nerd on the show, he quickly impressed the judges and fans alike with his audition. He was cut from the show after the round-of-32, he was brought back for the "Wild Card" round, and he was on his way to a spot in the Top 3.
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Aiken, who got a degree in special education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was teaching grade school kids with autism before he tried out for "Idol" in Atlanta. He was a former member of the Raleigh Boys Choir, and occasionally sang at weddings and at church.
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