R Steve introduced Isobel:
Isobel Flindall is a 16 year old grade 11 student at ENSS. She has been the president of the Interact Club for the second semester of this year, and has been elected to continue the position next year. She is also involved in the Brighton Leo Club and the ENSS Mathletes team. Isobel works part-time at the Brighton Public Library, and volunteers as a math tutor for younger high school students the school feels could benefit from the help. Her course-load tends towards maths and sciences, but she has also taken extended french and drama throughout her high school years.
Isobel approached Rotary this spring for support to attend SHAD as part of STEAM, a leadership and change making based summer program at Lakehead University this July. She was also our Adventures in Citizenship student this year.
Isobel has been a member of the ENSS Interact Club since grade 9. This school year they had a slow start as there were only two of them who transitioned from the previous year, others having graduated. She expects they are going into September in better shape. At the beginning of this school year they had to recruit new members as priority.
One project they do each year is to promote the Polio Plus campaign by doing the purple pinkie for a $1. This year they had some stickers they put up to promote the event and create awareness. They raised $126.96.
They usually have no money so that they have to fund raise for any particular event. This year they decided to sell hot chocolate one day a week all winter as a general fundraiser to put some funds in bank. It worked but they realize they could be better organized.
They donated $100 to the trees program in Uganda, also supported the Threads program at the school.
They had a sticky note program where they wrote inspirational and positive notes and then put them on student's lockers to be found in the morning. They were not asking for anything, just to give people a smile.
One of their projects is collecting milk bags that are given to a woman who turns them into mats and these are sent south. This was done in colabration with the Leo's. They were also able to increase support through the ENSS student Council who agreed to make bringing in milk bags worth points for ENSS house teams. They were able to collect a lot of milk bags this way.
Next Isobel shared with us some of her experience at Adventures in Citizenship in Ottawa April 22 to 25 (Sunday to Wednesday). She was billeted with 2 other girls. There were about 200 students from across Canada. She really enjoyed this program. She made friends from across the country and was able to network, share stories and learn from others. They learned about how Canadian political system works, they had tours and speakers. The highlight on Wednesday morning was to witness a Citizenship Ceremony.
Isobel thanked Rotary for giving her this opportunity.
The last segment of her presentation was about the SHAD program she will attend in July at Lakehead University. She had to apply against about 2500 other kids for about 1000 spots at one of 17 University's across Canada. She leaves June 28 returning July 26. She is looking forward to July in Thunderbay were she will stay in residence. There will be classes and projects to learn and grow her leadership and technical skills. Cost is $5,700 which she has been saving for. She enjoys math and science, and is part of math group at ENSS who practice math for FUN. They recently competed in Waterloo math contest as a team but don't know results yet.
Rotarian Murray thanked Isobel.