Minister of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture Wycliffe Smith (left) poses with the winning pupils and Lions Club Past President Carmen Lake (right).
PHILIPSBURG--The St. Maarten Lions Club rewarded four cycle 2 group 8 primary-school pupils for its Student Excellent Award (SEA) project for 2018-2019 which started in 2009 with the focus to reward pupils who made a tremendous improvement in their social skills, academics, behaviour, and became more community-minded during the last year in the primary school.
All schools were required to select one pupil who met the requirements of the SEA project and draft a letter indicating why this pupil deserved the Student Excellence Award.
This project is very important to the St. Maarten Lions Club as it believed it placed the youngsters in the spotlight as the club recognised them for their leadership skills and social achievements at home, school, church, sports or any other organisation in the community.
In the past, all the pupils selected from the 17 primary schools each received a monetary voucher from the club, which they were then able to use for any afterschool activity programme, sport or other activity programme of their choice, or to purchase a gift of their choice.
The club made a change in SEA project in 2017 with a decision to grant four pupils the opportunity to attend a summer camp. Two of them would travel to an international summer camp and two would participate in a local summer camp on the island.
The objective of the international summer camp experience was to give the pupils a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. The pupils selected to attend the summer camps would have the opportunity to meet with other youth of their age group, do activities together, learn from each other, grow socially and emotionally, and gain experience in many other aspects of life.
The SEA committee then selected two pupils, a boy from Prince Willem-Alexander School and a girl from Marie Genevieve de Weever Primary School, who then, accompanied by a Lions Club member, travelled to Missouri, to attend Camp Kanakuk with the theme of the year “God first, others second, and yourself third”.
This year's top boy pupils, D’Andre Daniel of Sister Borgia Primary School and Ray Thomas of the Methodist Agogic Centre Browlia F. Maillard campus, will travel with their Lion chaperone to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to attend Camp Kearney where they will participate in the “Adventure in the Outdoors” July 11-18.
The other two pupils, Geilyssa Simmon of St. Joseph Primary School and Randy Ortiz of Ruby Labega School, will participate in No Kidding with Our Kids Foundation’s “Artistic Inspiration Summer Camp” July 9-19.
The St. Maarten Lion Club wished awardees a great, fantastic summer camp experience and advises them to make everlasting memories.
The St. Maarten Lions Club will once again approach all primary schools with the SEA project from August, asking them to support and fully embrace this project in the coming school year. Focusing on their new group 8 pupils by monitoring their growth and development during the school year will make it easy to select a pupil for the Student Excellent Award at the end of the 2019-2020 school year.
