PRESTIGIOUS AWARD
SAERC student named Loran scholar.
A West Bay teenager is among several scholars from across Canada selected to receive an award billed as the country’s most comprehensive undergraduate scholarship for character, service and leadership.
Janine Lock, a Grade 12 student at Strait Area Education Recreation Centre in Port Hawkesbury, is one of 33 students selected from across the country for the Loran Award, valued at up to $100,000 over four years for undergraduate studies in Canada.
“I’ve just really honoured,” Lock said in an interview. “It’s not just me who got to this stage, there are a lot of people who have contributed to making this a possibility for me.”
Lock, 17, has long been active in her school and her community. She is a competitive horseback rider and can often be found at the horse barn. She is also active in her local 4-H club, is a member of the school soccer and curling teams and has served on its Share and Care committee.
Lock was nominated for the award by SAERC and had to go through a written application process.
“It was quite a large application, actually,” she said.
There were 84 young people selected as finalists and then Lock went through regional interviews in Halifax.
“I believe I had maybe three or four interviews that day,” she said.
Finally, earlier this month she travelled to Toronto to take part in a national conference, which also had an intense schedule.
“There were six interviews over two days and in the time that we weren’t in an interview, we were meeting the other candidates,” Lock said. “It was absolutely incredible, like nothing I’ve ever done before, really.”
In all, more than 4,400 students from across Canada applied for the honour.
The award includes a $10,000 annual stipend, tuition waivers from one of 25 partner universities, mentorship, summer internship funding as well as annual retreats and forums.
After graduation, Lock hopes to attend McGill University’s agricultural campus where she hopes to study agro-environmental science.
“(It was) partly 4-H, partly my parents,” she said, when asked how she developed that interest. “They’ve always raised me to be very environmentally aware, both my parents worked in that field for some time. I’ve jut been raised in the woods and have loved spending time in nature and the older I get the more I realize that a lot of our use as humans of the land is not necessarily sustainable.”
Lock also recently appeared before the Strait Regional School Board to tell its members about the so-called “bus day care” program that she devised. To help keep younger students occupied on their long bus rides to and from school in Port Hawkesbury, she came up with a series of activities for them, something she’s continued for the last seven years.
“I just saw the need and my natural reaction was to run games because that’s what my parents did with me when I’d get fidgety on long rides,” Lock said.
The school board has shown interest in having Lock do a presentation for its principals on the program.