Youth ServeMontana Scholarship Winners Announced
In partnership with Reach Higher Montana and Montana Campus Compact, ServeMontana is proud to announce the recipients of the 2021 Youth ServeMontana Scholarship.
High school seniors from across Montana – Anaconda to Thompson Falls, Roundup to Worden – were selected to receive the $1,000 scholarship in recognition of their community volunteerism and service leadership. Each of the 91 recipients dedicated a minimum of 50 hours to community service in the past 12 months.
Area winners included Antone Manning from Wolf Point and Dusti Marottek from Poplar.
“Faced with the struggles of COVID-19, these young Montanans decided to create hope for their neighbors through a phenomenal 11,946 collective service hours,” said Sarah R. Sadowski, executive director of ServeMontana and two term AmeriCorps VISTA Alumna. “They sought creative avenues of service to meet a broad scope of community needs and foster connections during a challenging year.”
Many recipients served in direct response to COVID-19, delivering meals for their quarantined neighbors, spearheading socially distant Halloween trunk-or-treats, sewing CDC-approved masks, and providing virtual tutoring. Service projects also included peer health education, coaching elementary and middle school sports, maintaining the graves of veterans, highway clean up and teen substance use prevention.
The Youth ServeMontana Scholarship was created to promote volunteerism among high school students, encourage young leaders to further their learning, and provide tuition assistance for Montana students who wish to attend college in-state at a Montana Campus Compact institution. Scholarship funds have been made available through support from Reach Higher Montana, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students pursue and fund post-secondary education; and Montana Campus Compact, an Ameri-Corps program committed to removing barriers to education in Montana. ServeMontana, the Governor’s Office of Community Service, administers the scholarships.