{"id":23454,"date":"2019-04-04T19:44:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23454"},"modified":"2019-04-04T19:44:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:44:30","slug":"leaders-of-tomorrow-scholar-takes-giving-back-from-community-to-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/leaders-of-tomorrow-scholar-takes-giving-back-from-community-to-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaders of Tomorrow Scholar takes \u201cgiving back\u201d from community to the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\nBrock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she approached the\npodium, Sally Falk felt like what she contributed to her community as a youth\nwas meaningful and had an impact on her community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the first\nrecipient of the John West Memorial Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship is\ncontinuing her work on the world stage, imparting the meaning and lasting\nimpact of the work of her forebears and other Canadian heroes to visitors from\naround the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town of Aurora is\nnow accepting applicants for the 2019 John West Memorial Scholarship, a bursary\ncreated from a bequest from the late Aurora mayor John West for local youth\npursuing post-secondary education who have made a concerted effort to have a\npositive impact on the community around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was really nice to\nreceive such an honour in my high school years as it felt like what I\ncontributed to my community as a young person growing up in Aurora was\nmeaningful and had some sort of impact on the residents of Aurora,\u201d says Ms.\nFalk, who now works as a team lead for the guide program run out of the Vimy\nRidge and Beaumont-Hamel National Historic Sites in northern France. \u201cI was\nreally lucky to grow up in Aurora; it\u2019s a great Town with lots of great people\nin elementary school, in high school, meeting lots of great students who wanted\nto do meaningful work, really pushed me to do more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she says it\nmight be a clich\u00e9, Ms. Falk counts her time on Student Council at Aurora High\nSchool as one of her most fulfilling achievements growing up. Eventually rising\nthrough the ranks to Student Council President in her final year of school, she\nsays she enjoyed being a voice for students and helping to foster an\nenvironment where everyone felt welcome and free to become involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe John West\nMemorial Scholarship really helped me move forward with my studies,\u201d she says.\n\u201cI ended up going overseas to France for the first two years of my degree (in\nhistory from Sciences Po Paris near Reims), then I had a little bit more\nliberty in choosing what school I wanted to go to and pursue my higher\neducation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now focusing on her\ndegree in Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Ms. Falk is\nback in France until August, leading the team of guides at those hallowed\nCanadian battlefields. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI worked as a guide\nlast summer at Vimy and had the privilege to learn a bit more about Canada\u2019s\nrole in the First World War and share my knowledge with the visitors who came\nto the site from all over the world,\u201d she says. \u201cI was then hired back in 2019\nto work for eight more months within the guide program to help mentor the new\nguides coming in and work a little bit more in developing the program. We\u2019re\nfifteen Canadians living in northern France, being an ambassador to Canada and\nfor Canada\u2019s role in the First World War for all\nvisitors who come to the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing on site is\nquite striking. It is one of the largest preserved battlefields in the Region\nfrom the First World War. There is an emotional piece to the site. A lot of\npeople remember Vimy Ridge as a battle that was a victory for the Canadian\nCorps in the First World War [and] this is about remembering and commemorating\nthose losses not just during the assault on Vimy Ridge, but over the entire\nfour years of the war. I hope to impart that sense of remembrance not just to\nCanadians but to everyone coming to visit the site. It can be overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Falk has a vested\ninterest in the site. Her great-grandfather fought at Vimy and was one of the\nlucky ones to survive the battle. Now as a student of history, Sally hopes to\nfocus even further on her family roots in grad school, with his life and\nexperiences playing a key role in ideas she has for her history thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is awesome for\nevery student at that age to realise what a privilege it is to live in such a\nwonderful town,\u201d says Sally, encouraging all Grade 12 students to consider\napplying for the John West Memorial Scholarship. \u201cAll it takes for the sort of\nachievements in these awards is a step of kindness and to reach out to fellow\nstudents and the community you have outside of school and the classroom, see\nwhat you can do and how you can reach out. Take more simple steps to improve\nthe lives of people who live in Aurora or other people who live outside of\nAurora for people who aren\u2019t necessarily as privileged as ourselves to grow up\nthere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nmore information on how to apply for the 2019 John West Memorial Leaders of\nTomorrow Scholarship, visit aurora.ca\/<\/em>leadersoftomorrow. The deadline to\napply is Wednesday, May 1.<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more information on how to apply for the 2019 John West Memorial Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship, visit aurora.ca\/leadersoftomorrow. The deadline to apply is Wednesday, May 1.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-04-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-66i","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 03:45:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}