Scholarship Current Students Applicant review page
In 2025, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful will award two $1,000 merit based scholarships: one to a current YA student and one to an alum. Reviwers, please review the scoring rubric then select an applicant by clicking on the ID number on the left below. Read the application then enter a score for the three short essay questions. An optional box for comments is at the end. Thank you for your help!
For any questions or problems with the form, please contact Rob Dubas at rdubas@keeppabeautiful.org for questions on the scholarship or Young Ambassador Program, please contact Kylie McCutcheon at kmccutcheon@keeppabeautiful.org.
Click to view the scoring rubric.Throughout this year, I’ve learned that an environmental steward is more than someone who cares for their environment; it’s someone who takes action to make changes that will benefit their environment in the long run. I thought becoming a Young Ambassador would improve my environmental stewardship through my education and clean-up event, however, I’ve learned that the knowledge I’ve acquired and the connections I’ve made were just as, if not more, significant. While my events helped me make my community cleaner and educate others on how to be more sustainable, having a true understanding of our relationship with our environment has prompted me to partake in real-world action.
Furthermore, I’ve learned how the civic side ties into environmental protection. To fulfill my education event, I connected with my town’s chair of the Environmental Advisory Council. As I spoke with him, I discovered what environmental protection plans and policies have been made in my community. For change to occur, it’s important to reach officials in our local governments to implement policies that will ensure the protection of our environment. For instance, my town’s EAC established a Green Business Recognition Program to incentivise local businesses to reduce their waste and carbon dioxide emissions.
Being a Young Ambassador opened many new doors for me to become more active in my community’s environmental sustainability efforts. Specifically, I connected with my borough’s Environmental Advisory Council about our ecological friendliness from a teen perspective. After reaching out to Domenic Rocco, the chair of the EAC, about hosting an educational activity at my town’s Greenfest to fulfill my graduation requirement, I discovered that we share many similar goals for our community. Greenfest is an annual event hosted by the EAC with fun activities to promote environmental awareness. This year, I’ll be representing Keep Pennsylavnia Beautiful with an educational activity for kids about the importance of recycling. I’ll be teaching them how to recycle bottle caps to make pins, and I connected with several establishments in my town to donate supplies. Through this interaction, I also received the opportunity to become the first Youth Ambassador of the Conshohocken EAC. Beginning this month, I’ll attend monthly meetings with others on the board to discuss plans for our town in the future. My goal is to advocate for more sustainable efforts at my school, beginning with implementing a functioning recycling program. Like many other Young Ambassadors shared during virtual meetings throughout the year, far too many schools in our state lack an effective recycling program. Most simply trash everything because it’s easier than enforcing recycling. However, while this is easier now, our communities will soon reap the consequences of creating so much waste. As a new member of the EAC, I want to prevent this issue from plaguing future generations.
Not only has this program inspired me to implement recycling initiatives in my community, but it has also shown me how the aesthetic and beauty of my town can go hand in hand with our environmental friendliness. Hosting my environmental clean-up event was one driving factor for this discovery. I connected with my borough’s Parks and Recreation Department to help run our annual ‘Wells Street Clean Up’ and had an amazing turnout of 40 volunteers. During this event, volunteers cleaned up Cedar Grove Park and the sides of the road alongside it. They also helped clean up the park trails by removing invasives and mulch. In addition, the DOW job shadow experience at the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy’s Dragonfly Farm inspired me to connect with my borough’s landscape manager to implement a rain garden planting initiative in my town. I learned about the effectiveness of rain gardens and how they can be created from Jessie Kemper, the Director of Conservation at the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy. Without this experience, I wouldn’t know as much as I do now to make this possible.
As I near the end of my experience as a Young Ambassador, I can proudly say this program taught me more than I expected regarding both my passion for environmental sustainability and my capabilities to step outside my comfort zone.
While I always tried to be environmentally friendly, like recycling whenever I could, I didn’t consider myself much of an environmental advocate before joining this program. However, learning from professionals and my fellow ambassadors about their efforts to protect the environment and keep our state clean has inspired me to do the same. I’ve learned that you can influence your environment no matter who you are. This inspired me to apply to study abroad through CIEE’s high school summer abroad program to learn even more about sustainability efforts across the globe. Fortunately, I got into the Aquatic Ecosystems and Sustainability program in Lisbon, Portugal. In addition, this program has helped me choose the career path I want to take as a rising senior. I want to become an environmental engineer to make a long-lasting impact on the world, creating sustainable solutions to reduce our ecological footprint.
Not only did I learn about my passion for sustainability through this program, but I also learned that I can thrive in social situations outside of my comfort zone. Throughout the year, I’ve faced many circumstances where I’ve had to interact with strangers and share my thoughts and ideas with others. While this was extremely intimidating to me at first, I learned how important this skill is to have and how I can excel in these situations. From speaking to professionals working for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to even a fellow Young Ambassador at the DOW job shadow experience, I’ve learned how beneficial it is to communicate my ideas with others. During the DOW job shadow, I got to speak one-on-one with Ramesh Iyer about global sustainability efforts and how consumers and companies need to work together to promote sustainability. Conversations like these have formed the knowledge I have now to create change in my community.
Finally, the third thing I discovered about myself through my experience is how much power I truly have to make a difference. This program was a great opportunity to get my foot in the door of the environmental sustainability conversations happening around me; however, the real reason I’ve been able to do this is my motivation and the efforts I’ve made to educate myself on this topic. To be an active voice in my community, I need to be proactive, which I believe is the most important lesson this program taught me. Creating an education event and a clean-up event made me go out into my community as a high school student with no ‘credentials’ and make my ideas a reality. This, I’ve come to learn, is what being an environmental steward and a Young Ambassador is about.
