Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, Colorado’s largest outdoor stewardship organization, have awarded the inaugural Grossman Scholarship to Ella Douglas, a graduate from Denver South High School’s 2018 class.
The $5,000 scholarship, bestowed by former VOC board member Rick Grossman and his wife Susie, is a new scholarship fund created to make educational dreams possible to those who have been involved in volunteer outdoor stewardship.
“The scholarship is intended to foster lifelong stewards,” Ann Baker Easley, executive director of VOC, said in a news release. “By enabling more careers in natural resources, we can ensure that Colorado’s outdoor places remain viable for generations to come.”
The scholarship was available to graduating seniors in VOC’s Cairn Youth Program, which guides 30-plus high school students in monthly environmental stewardship and leadership activities throughout the school year. Douglas has participated in the program since 2016 and her strong academic skills as well as her plans to pursue a career in an environmental-related field qualified her as a recipient of the scholarship.
“My career goal is to make the world a better place. If my career involves helping the environment, I will have reached my goal,” Douglas said in the release.
She was a straight-A student at Denver South High School and will attend the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall to study environmental science and/or environmental engineering. In addition to VOC’s Cairn Youth Program, Douglas has been involved in numerous volunteer programs throughout her high school career including Colorado Young Leaders and Denver South High School’s Unified Gym Games.
It was Douglas’s involvement in VOC’s Cairn Youth Program where her love for the environment grew.
“The environment is an area that I have been passionate about for a long time, and when I joined Cairn it became even more important to me. Cairn inspired me to want to do something in the environmental field,” Douglas said.
High school students interested in participating in the Cairn Youth Program can submit applications for the 2018-19 school year at www.voc.org/cairn; applications will close July 31.
VOC has also opened applications for a second Grossman Scholarship, to be awarded to non-traditional students ages 25 and older who are pursuing postsecondary education in an outdoor-related field at an accredited two- or four-year college in Colorado.
More information about the Grossman Scholarship can be found at www.voc.org/scholarship; applications will close on Sept. 16. For more information about Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, visit www.voc.org.
Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado is a statewide nonprofit volunteer organization dedicated to motivating and enabling people to be active stewards of Colorado’s natural resources. Since 1984, VOC’s award-winning volunteer, youth, and leadership training programs have engaged nearly 115,000 people of all ages in caring for Colorado’s outdoors — a total donated labor value of $23 million. Such volunteer efforts have made a lasting impact on Colorado through hands-on work in fire and flood restoration, trail building and maintenance, tree planting and reforestation, and more. For more information, visit www.voc.org or call 303-715-1010.
