Discus Awards

Back in September, I wrote about how the 2012-2013 program year is going to be a year of improvement for the Discus Awards. On that front, we are continuing to work on making the updates to our program that we hope will allow us to recognize more students and provide more scholarships for years to come.

The main reason for this update post is to explain a temporary change in the scholarship awarding schedule for this year. We will be announcing the winner of the first '12-'13 National All-Around Student Scholarship on Thursday, January 31st. We will then award the final 9 NAAS Scholarships of the year on Friday, June 28th. As a result of all the changes we have been making this year, we delayed the start of our recognition judging and we are choosing to award the majority of our NAAS Scholarships on June 28th this year to maximize the number of Finalists who will be considered for the scholarship.

For other scholarships that will be awarded through the Discus Awards program this year, just stay tuned to your inbox and our Facebook page for scholarship announcements!

Filed under: Discus Dan

Welcome back to school, mates!  We are fresh off an incredibly successful 2011-2012 Discus Awards program during which we awarded more than $5 million in scholarships to well-rounded high school students. We also added a new type of scholarship - network scholarships - to the open scholarships we were already awarding.

Our 2012-2013 program promises to be another great one, and we hope to award even more scholarships than we did last year. However, we are making some changes to our program and need a little more time to implement them for the '12-'13 program year. As a result, please note the following changes:

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Filed under: Discus Dan

Discus Award winner Jasper Arneberg, or as we call him "Jasper the Juggler" (he doesn't know that yet), performed with friends at a talent show. What happened next is quite possibly the greatest weather forecast I've ever seen.  Sure, the storm front coming through seems to be quickly replaced with a forecast for bright sunshine, but really, weatherman seem to be wrong half the time anyway.  However, Jasper and his group deliver the forecast with style and flair unmatched by any weather report. Ever.  Enjoy this folks, we may never see a weather report quite like this again.

Filed under: Discus Dan • All-Around High School Students • Discus Award Winner Video of the Day

Over twenty-seven million people suffer from modern day slavery, this includes over two-hundred thousand child slaves in just western to central Africa. On Ghana’s Lake Volta live seven thousand of those children. Slaves as young as four years old are malnourished and forced to work seventeen hours daily. Hearing of their plight, I had the responsibility to act. I was given the opportunity to visit Lake Volta and help rescue eight young boys from a life of bondage and enter into a life of freedom. These statistics compelled me to action, but seeing lives treated as property ignited a passion that would not be forgotten.

Jesus tells us faith without work is dead, and I believe God provides us opportunities to live out this call. My call was Ghana Rock, a night of praise and worship to bring funds and awareness of the child slavery epidemic on Lake Volta. It started as a question, “Can a sixteen year old with no experience, plan and organize a concert from start to finish to end child slavery?” Together with a team of eight teenagers and God’s constant faithfulness, the answer was clearly, “Yes!” The event was an enormous success; we were able to raise over forty-thousand dollars, bring three nationally recognized Christian artists, and unite the community for a common cause.

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Filed under: Madison Vincent • All-Around High School Students • Meet the Discus Winner

If you guys have been following the news out of Silicon Valley about "The Facebook", you may have noticed the IPO has been a bit of a dud so far.  Some may say in a new world being disrupted by technology, we've discovered there's no substitute for social networking in person.

In another win for the traditionalists out there, Discus Award winner Karl Segletes has proven that a good old fashioned photograph of nature can't be topped, no matter what Instagram filter you use.  During a recent trip to Alaska, Karl fired off this snapshot of the beautiful, all-natural landscape.  Score one for the true artists out there!

Filed under: Discus Dan • All-Around High School Students • Discus Award Winner Picture of the Day