By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
On June 7, the African Caribbean Council of Halton (ACCH) awarded their African Caribbean and Black Excellence Scholarship to 11 students across Halton. The ceremony took place at Garth Webb Secondary School in Oakville.
Emcee Vanassa Richards-Thompson, deputy judge of a Superior Court of Ontario, took the stage to kick off the event.
“What an opportunity for us to celebrate young people’s achievements and to cheer them on and encourage them,” Richards-Thompson said. “In a world where there are so many things going wrong, this is going very well this evening because we have a lot to cheer about, as it relates to our young people.”
This year’s award winners were Femi Oludairo, Simi Olatunji, Jamike Uboma, Kofi Boateng, Oluwatobi Samuel Adelekan, Oluwatoni Adelekan, Zikora Ezeokana, Adesewa Adefarakan, Lope Soleye, Cendranae Findlay, and Samuel Okwuegbuna.
Each student went up on stage to accept their scholarship and take a photo.
A representative from the Halton Regional Police Service was one of the speakers who addressed the crowd and gave some words of encouragement to the students.
“This room has so many leaders in it,” he said. “And I don’t mean formal leaders, I mean leaders that spend a lot of time building the foundation of what you’re seeing today. If things are the way they are today, it’s because people have suffered greatly to get here.”
“To the youth, I’ll say this: understand and appreciate that while there’s all this support around you and everyone wishing success upon you, it wasn’t free,” he continued. “We’re not where we want to be yet, and as a police officer I can attest to that, we need to improve. We’re not where we want to be, we’re not where we should be, but thank goodness we’re not where we used to be.”
Effie Triantafilopoulos, MPP for Oakville North-Burlington, also gave a speech to the students.
“I want to honour and congratulate all of the recipients of the scholarships,” Triantafilopoulos said. “I want to tell you how very proud our community is of the hard work and dedication you demonstrated in being able to come to this point.”
“And I do know that your future is very bright, and because your future is bright, I know that our province and our country has a bright future with leaders like you,” Triantafilopoulos said.
Triantafilopoulos also attended the group’s first scholarship presentation last year and commented on the organization’s success in their sophomore event.
“To be able to now see this in its second year shows me how successful it has been. And I think that it amplifies the fact that there are some really great students there doing not just scholarship, they’ve got the academics, but they also have the commitment to community and to be able to recognize that, I think is really impressive.”
Triantafilopoulos also offers a unique opportunity to students who are awarded the scholarship.
“One of the things that I offered the board last year was to say to them, ‘If there are any of the students who would be interested in having a summer internship at my community office, I’d be happy to do that and to give them some insights into what it’s like to be a member of provincial parliament, what it’s like to be able to work in an office that deals with not only community things, but politics and that sort of thing,’” Triantafilopoulos said.
She said a student from this year’s event had already approached her and said they were interested in the opportunity.
Karisa Sol-Edeigba, a recipient of the scholarship last year, explained the process of applying for the award.
“I believe there was an essay, we had to get a few references, and there may or may not have been a video application,” Sol-Edeigba said. “It really made me feel like all the volunteering I had done throughout the years, and all the time I had invested into volunteering, really paid off,” said Sol-Edeigba. “And so I think it also really helped me with my expenses because of course, there are so many things to pay for in your first year [of university], and many other fees and things you need money for just spring up on you, unexpected expenses.”
