The Junior Citizen of the Year in the Battlefords can add another honour to her mantle.
Lindsay Martel has now been awarded the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association Junior Citizen of the Year title.
She is one of four Saskatchewan youth to receive the award.
The award, handed out in partnership with SaskPower and the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, is to be presented at a ceremony at Government House in Regina June 21 by Lt.-Gov. Vaughn Schofield.
The award includes a $3,000 scholarship to further her post-secondary education. Martel had previously told the Regional Optimist she planned to study psychology at the University of Alberta.
In total, 79 people were nominated under the program.
Martel's honours over the past year have come about as a result of years of volunteer efforts in the community and elsewhere.
Martel has volunteered in soup kitchens and churches, with camps, medical charities and a variety of other places. At John Paul II Collegiate she was active organizing pep rallies and spirit days, dances, lunches and other events, the yearbook committee as well as hours of involvement in Be the Change. She was also active in Students Against Drunk Driving.
Martel has devoted her time to volunteering and participation at Living Faith Chapel, at BUH, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and to other events and organizations.
She had also worked and volunteered with Compassion Canada, an international organization through which she sponsored a child in central America. She had started sponsoring a child with the organization when she was 13 years old.
In speaking to Alex McPhail of the Regional Optimist in December, Martel pointed to the blessings of her own life as motivation to help others. "I just enjoy doing it because I already have so much, so why not help other people?"
She said in the interview with that after volunteering at a camp at age 13, "I realized how much I enjoyed helping other people, and then whenever the opportunity arose, I grasped it and tried to help as much as I could."
