Scholarship program recognizes environmental ‘champions’
Submission deadline April 22, winners to be announced in June
Divert NS is about to kick off its Champion of the Environment Scholarship program for 2018, with $20,000 worth of scholarships to be awarded.
Participating Grade 12 students will be asked to write an essay, provide a summary of their environmental activities and have a letter of reference from someone from their school or community.
The program opens Feb. 26 and the deadline for submitting essays is April 22. The scholarship recipients will be announced in June.
One winner will be chosen from each of Nova Scotia’s seven solid waste management regions. One of them will be picked as provincial winner and will receive a $5,000 scholarship. The six other regional winners each will get a scholarship worth $2,500.
This is the second year for the program, although there was a scholarship component to the former Nova Scotia Recycles Contest. That initiative – an effort to promote environmental awareness among all grade levels – was discontinued a couple of years ago.
“It seemed the participation was starting to decline a bit in the Recycles Contest for a number of reasons,” said Jeff MacCallum, chief executive officer of Divert NS.
The decision was made to end the NS Recycles Contest and introduce curriculum-aligned lesson plans for teachers in Grades Primary to 6.
“We’ve been very happy with them so far,” MacCallum said. “Those resources really tie into a variety of topics, so you could have a science classroom that takes a look at the impact of plastic litter in the ocean ... There’s some that would tie into social studies, some that would tie into science, and so we’re really kind of pushing that.”
Meanwhile, the scholarship component of the Recycles Contest – which was geared towards older students – was enhanced to become the Champion of the Environment Scholarship program.
Aside from writing an essay, participants in this program are required to list the environmentrelated activities or groups they’re involved in. The idea, MacCallum said, is for the students to “sort of demonstrate to us, I guess, their commitment to the environment and their engagement in the community, and then they have to pro- vide a letter of reference as well.”
The scholarships awarded through the program are for any post-secondary institution.
Last year’s provincial winner was Thomas King of Shelburne Regional High School. (Shelburne is in Region 6 on Nova Scotia’s solid waste map.) Claudia Crocker of Islands Consolidated School in Freeport was the winner for Region 7, which covers Yarmouth and Digby counties.
“If you look at our regional winners and you look at the calibre of students – both academically and their participation in the community – they’re very impressive students,” MacCallum said.
Divert NS, which until a couple of years ago had been known as the Resource Recovery Fund Board, continues to try to build a culture of recycling in the province, MacCallum said.
“We’ve been 20-plus years at it and quite successful,”he said, “but if we don’t continue to engage the youth and focus on the educational side, we (could) quickly lose that momentum, I think, so it’s always been an important focus for this organization.”
This is the second year for the program, although there was a scholarship component to the former Nova Scotia Recycles Contest.