Scholarship Presentations:

Glide should be very proud of its graduating students. We received 8 scholarship applications, all of them really impressive young people. Their GPAs averaged 3.85. They plan to follow their talents and hearts into careers as architect and business owner, artist and musician, doctor and nurse practitioner, actuarian and historian. As for community service, these eight students have together racked up at least 2000 hours of service, not even counting leadership in school government. We don’t know when they have time to sleep.

The Glide Community Club is very pleased to be able to award two $1000 scholarships. The recipients are two young women who have shown outstanding service leadership – not only giving many hours of their time, but making it possible for others to serve as well.

 
Caroline Brown

It’s not often that an 18-year-old is called a "humanitarian." That’s how one of her teachers describes Caroline Brown.

While researching a school project last year, Caroline learned that over 5,000 children worldwide die every day due to a lack of sanitary water. It really bothered her. All of us probably find that statistic distressing, but we’re not likely to change our lives as a result. Caroline did. She says, "I couldn’t go on living, knowing this fact, without doing something about it."

Caroline also knows about the magic of multiplying your own service by providing service opportunities for others. She spent over a hundred hours last summer organizing a walk-a-thon called "Walk for a Well." Because of her work, 80 or 90 people were able to do something about unsanitary water. They raised over $5500. With matching funds, that paid for six wells in Niger.  Caroline is planning the second annual walk-a-thon. Notice the word "annual." She’s training someone to take over the walk-a-thons after she leaves for college.

Caroline says "serving others has been in my DNA since the day I was born." In addition to the walk-a-thon, she has volunteered several hundred hours to service projects around Glide and to school government leadership. The Director of Glide’s soup kitchen describes her as "remarkably proactive." For example, she has volunteered at the soup kitchen since it started, but she also took it upon herself to organize a food drive at the high school to help out the next week’s chili dinner. Caroline says, "When you see that something needs to be done, you don’t sit idly by – you take initiative, and do it."

Caroline has also maintained a 3.9 GPA, while taking Glide’s toughest courses and playing sports.  These young people seem to have inexhaustible energy!

Caroline plans to study nursing at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, and then to become a nurse practitioner. Fve to ten years from now, she pictures herself in the heart of Africa working with a non-profit organization as a nurse, playing soccer with the village kids, and continuing to work on international water issues.

Few people of any age have the caring, commitment, and drive to change the world. Caroline Brown does. The Glide Community Club is proud to recognize her for the ways she has already touched people’s lives here in Glide and to give Caroline assistance to reach her dreams.

 

Madison Gladding

Madison Gladding says service is her life. Her community service experiences began as youth mentor with elementary students. That led to many service projects at the elementary school, which in turn led to honor society and FFA service projects. And finally, that led to her involvement with the Mercy Youth Volunteering Program.

She began volunteering at Mercy at the start of her sophomore year. She rotated through several departments, then for the last two years, she has worked two hours every week in the ER. But her service goes far beyond those hours. As a member and currently president of the program’s executive committee, she has organized fund-raisers, led meetings, organized training of new volunteers, and spoken at area schools to recruit volunteers. Mercy’s youth volunteering program is a model for such programs, and Madison and the director have gone to Coos Bay to help the hospital there start their own. She’s also made presentations about the program at state and national health conferences.

Madison was also selected to be one of the first students in a new medical internship program. She’s finished over 100 hours assisting the local ENT doctors, then working in physical therapy and imaging. Her third rotation in day surgery has just started.

This only scratches the surface of the service projects and leadership roles that Madison has taken on, all while taking the hardest courses Glide offers and maintaining a 4.0 grade point. She has been accepted at Linfield College, where she will major in pre-med. After medical school, she plans to serve as a doctor in an under-served rural community. She wants to continue to be a service leader, looking for ways to bring medical care to those in need. She also wants to mentor youth who are interested in health careers, serving as a role model just as others have been models for her.

We think she is already a role model for all of us, demonstrating how to multiply her own service by supporting the service of others. The Glide Community Club is very pleased to be able to recognize Madison Gladding’s accomplishments and help her go on to even greater achievements.