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Six local students awarded Millennium Scholarships
Wednesday July 2 2008
 
Six local students are among the winners of the 2008 Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation Excellence Awards.
The award recognizes university and college-bound students for their achievements in leadership, innovation, academic performance, and community service. The Foundation received 11,101 applications from students across the country. They awarded 1,052 scholarships— 100 national, 241 provincial and 711 local.
Local award winners will receive a one-time $4,000 award. Provincial/territorial award winners will receive a $4,000 award, renewable up to three times (for a possible total of $16,000). National award winners will receive a $5,000 award, renewable up to three times (for a possible total of $20,000).
The following outstanding students have been rewarded for their good citizenship, fresh ideas and academic excellence:
Emily Dimytosh (Provincial),
Christ The King Catholic School
Dimytosh used her considerable leadership skills to work for environmental change. In 2006, she founded Club Green, an environmental club at her school. The group has launched numerous initiatives, including delivering 1,200 compact fluorescent light bulbs in the Halton community, implementing an aggressive school-wide recycling program, developing an environmental awareness and events bulletin board, and planting local plants around the school.
As a result of these and other initiatives, Christ the King became the only school within the district to receive a Silver EcoSchool Certification. Dimytosh promoted the EcoSchool program at the annual E-POWER conference and founded Halton Environmental Youth to encourage schools to participate in EcoSchool and monitor their progress.
Thanks to these initiatives, Halton Hills is on its way to being the first municipality to have every middle and secondary school certified as an EcoSchool. Dimytosh also served as the youth representative on the Mayor’s Green Plan Task Force, and she was selected to attend the 12-day Global Youth Leadership Conference in Washington and New York. She plans to study commerce in university.
Alysha Pannu (Local)
Milton District High School
Pannu, who lives in Norval, initiated an anti-bullying project to do something proactive about alarming statistics from a 2003 provincial survey showing that one in three students reported being bullied. She started an anonymous voice mail system at her school so that students could leave message about their safety or theft concerns.
Pannu is a facilitator at a family literacy program at Cherrytree Public School; this program equips parents (many of whom are new immigrants) with the tools and knowledge they need to promote literacy within the home. She is the secretary of the Halton Region Youth Advisor Committee, representing the voice of youth in the area and working to promote various “green” initiatives. She is actively involved in her school’s DECA club and participated in the provincial competition in February. Keenly interested in issues of tolerance and conflict resolution, Pannu plans to study human rights in university.
Erica Mills (Local)
Acton District High School
Mills launched a  “Health Month” initiative at her school to encourage her peers to make healthy lifestyle choices. Each week focused on a particular issue, and Mills created posters and did morning announcements to raise awareness of sexual health, physical fitness, oral health and substance abuse.
After her father was diagnosed with cancer, she took on the role of volunteer co-ordinator with the Relay for Life cancer fundraiser. She was responsible for recruiting volunteers from her school and the wider community and assigning them duties ranging from setting up the event to running individual stations.
Mills is the founding member of her school’s Humanitarian Council, and in this role she works tirelessly to convince students of the need to assist others, both locally and globally. She plays on the school basketball team and is a member of the Acton Soccer Club. She plans to study international development in university and is considering a career as a teacher or conservation biologist.
Christopher Ackroyd (Local)
Christ The King Catholic School
Ackroyd is a dedicated leader who creates opportunities for others to develop their leadership skills and shine as individuals. He organized a talent show to allow students to display their non-academic talents as singers, dancers, martial artists and poets. He then organized smaller coffee house nights for those uncomfortable with performing in front of 400 people, as well as for those who wished to display their visual art. As president of the Student Athletic Association, he launched a school intramural league to give students of all athletic skill levels an opportunity to have fun playing team sports. For several years, Ackroyd has also volunteered as a leadership counsellor at the Ontario Educational Leadership Centre, where he was responsible for overseeing the leadership development of 17 Grade 7 boys.
He is an accomplished athlete, playing as captain of several rep hockey teams (including the Georgetown AA Hockey Team), competing at the Ontario Minor Hockey Association AAA Championships on three separate occasions and working as a referee for both soccer and hockey. He is interested in pursuing his love of sports through a career in sports administration or sports therapy.
Emily Dobson (Local)
 Georgetown District High School
Dobson is a social activist who works for change locally and globally. She collects gently used soccer equipment to donate to children in Africa through the Canada-Africa Friendship Association, raises money for Habitat for Humanity (and is part of a project to build houses in Georgetown and South America) and is leading a team to compost organic material at her school.
Dobson is also extremely involved in community theatre. She has worked on everything from designing sets and managing the lighting to coordinating props and creating brochures. As a member of the Georgetown Little Theatre Youth Group, she also helps run Saturday workshops for students on improvisation, mask making, make-up application and voice projection. She plays trombone in the school wind ensemble, is a member of the school’s Reach for the Top team and competes in badminton and archery. She intends to study science in university and is interested in a career in zoology or wildlife biology.
Marena Manierka, a Georgetown resident who attends Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, also received a Local award but no biography was available for her.
Since 2000, the Foundation has almost 900,000 bursaries and scholarships, worth $2.6 billion, to students across Canada. In Ontario, over 366,800 students have received more than $1 billion in support form the Foundation. For more information about the Foundation and its programs, visit www.millenniumscholarships.ca.