{"id":6284,"date":"2014-04-16T17:08:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T21:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6284"},"modified":"2014-04-16T17:08:35","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T21:08:35","slug":"award-recipients-have-given-back-on-local-and-international-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/award-recipients-have-given-back-on-local-and-international-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"Award recipients have \u201cgiven back\u201d on local and international scale"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Do you have a spare hour or two on your hands?<\/p>\n

Alex Auger, Nicolas Chethuan, Sydney Cobbold, Alexander Harrison, and Mathilde Par\u00e9 could give you some sage advice on just what to do with them. Collectively, these Aurora students have given back over 1,000 hours to their community over their high school years.<\/p>\n

They were honoured this week among recipients of the 2014 Give Back Awards. <\/p>\n

The Give Back Awards were established in 2014 by Belinda Stronach, then Member of Parliament for Newmarket-Aurora, with the salary she received serving in the House of Commons. Each $500 grant is a way to recognize the good works students do from within the school community to the wider world as a whole. It is an award not necessarily contingent on academic success, or whether or not they were going to pursue university or college studies. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Thursday\u2019s ceremony held in the glittering atrium of Magna\u2019s headquarters, honoured students from Aurora up to Georgina, who hit all the marks. <\/p>\n

Over 870 hours of community involvement have been racked up by Alex Auger alone. A student at St. Andrew\u2019s College, he was saluted for his \u201cpersonal commitment to areas of community service and school leadership at SAC.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin his school, Alex volunteers as a school ambassador, as the tech designer for dramatic productions, as a lifeguard at swim meets, and as a fundraiser for causes like 30-Hour famine,\u201d said the Give Back selection committee.<\/p>\n

Alex also serves as president of St. Andrew\u2019s College\u2019s outreach committee, overseeing charitable endeavours pursued at the school and mentorship opportunities within its walls. Outside the expansive Aurora campus, he has also dedicating his time helping to improve education in Madagascar.<\/p>\n

In February, Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School was transformed into a showcase of food and cuisine as students hosted \u201cSomething for Sarah\u201d, their second annual bone marrow drive and community event to benefit six year old Sarah, who is living with leukemia, and her family.
\nSarah\u2019s was a plight which inspired Williams\u2019 students to take action, and two of the driving forces behind the campaign were also honoured. <\/p>\n

Sydney Cobbold was one of the faces of the campaign. As the lead of the school\u2019s Peer Mentor program, she has provided leadership within the school environment on a number of fronts. <\/p>\n

\u201cThrough her bone marrow drive within the school, two students were matches for patients in need of bone marrow \u2013 incredibly beating the 1 in 22 million odds,\u201d said organizers. \u201cSydney was also determined to bring the Terry Fox Run back to her school and, after a 20 year hiatus, she co-organized its successful return. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to giving back, Sydney has spearheaded significant efforts to engage the community and to support the local and global communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander Harrison is also a Peer Mentor at Williams who helped drive \u201cSomething for Sarah.\u201d Harrison, the captain of the school\u2019s Relay for Life Team, has contributed to the community as a whole in anything from fundraising to sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an example of someone who has shown consistent commitment to the improvement of our community,\u201d said the committee. \u201cHe believes that \u2018volunteering is an amazing way to give back to the community that gives so much to us.\u2019 He lives by these values, exemplified in his many volunteer roles\u2026selling ribbons for Wounded Warriors, assisting the Aurora Minor Hockey Association at the Hockey Helps the Homeless Tournament, and with Neighbourhood Network\u2019s Spring Tree Planting Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Community and sport are also two watchwords for Nicolas Chethuan, a student at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School. His many volunteer endeavours include the Neighbourhood Network Food Drive, Big Brothers Big Sisters of York, and assisting a children\u2019s orphanage in Colombia. <\/p>\n

\u201cNicolas believes that everyone should \u2018have the same educational and recreational opportunities regardless of their age, cultural background, physical abilities, or economical means,\u2019\u201d said the committee. \u201cNick has spent many years volunteering within his local community and on a global scale. He has also taken on the role as mentor advocate for the Canadian Association of Disabled Skiing, where he helps students with physical and mental disabilities participate in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hailed as the \u201cultimate community ambassador\u201d, Mathilde Par\u00e9 of \u00c9cole secondaire catholique Renaissance, has also had an impact within the local community and the wider world.<\/p>\n

\u201cMathilde\u2026plays an active role both in the community and her high school,\u201d they said. \u201cFor over a year, Mathilde has volunteered at the Southlake Residential Care Village, where she helps as a program assistant. In 2012, she travelled to Honduras to build a house through Habitat for Humanity. She is currently working on a fundraiser for The Lavoie Foundation and will soon be riding her bike 300 km to Welland and back for this cause.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you have a spare hour or two on your hands?<\/p>\n

Alex Auger, Nicolas Chethuan, Sydney Cobbold, Alexander Harrison, and Mathilde Par\u00e9 could give you some sage advice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6284","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\/2014\/04\/2014-04-17-17.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1Dm","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 20:27:10","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\/6284","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=6284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}