Discus Awards

I founded Donate-A-Toothbrush about 2 years ago, not expecting it to grow into what it has become. One night, while brushing my teeth, I started thinking about how kids in third world countries were not fortunate enough to have simple amenities that we take for granted, one of the most common being the toothbrush. I thought further that getting toothbrushes to these kids would be a wonderful way to expand my community service beyond assisting the elderly (For the past 10 years, I have participated in a wonderful community service group called Joining Old and Young (JOY), a chorus of high school students who sing to the elderly in assisted living facilities. Presently, I am co-president of JOY).

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Filed under: Paige Alenick • All-Around High School Students • Meet the Winner

Children around the world are diagnosed with cancer every day. Although not a new disease, cancer has a unique impact on children. Through volunteering at my local hospital in the summer of 2010, I saw that although pediatric patients received phenomenal care, they lacked one important thing stuck in the hospital 24/7 -- interaction and emotional support from their peers. One young patient in particular struck me; he would spend his time playing alone or with a nurse in an isolated hospital playroom. I knew from that moment that I wanted to create a way for youth in hospitals to receive support and motivation from their peers. After talking with doctors and students in my area, I established Youth Inspire. The core idea is simple: to connect high schools around the world to their local hospitals, promoting peer-to-peer interaction between students and patients and providing patients with a holistic emotional experience that every teenager should have.

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Filed under: Jason Cui • All-Around High School Students • Meet the Winner

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 • Winner Video of the Day