There is a saying that one good turn deserves another. Vanessa Peynenburg is living proof: she’s on a definite winning streak of good turn after good turn after good turn.
Last weekend, Peynenburg got a phone call informing her that she had won a Terry Fox Humanitarian Award. The prize includes $28,000 to be distributed over four years. This, she said, will virtually pay for her undergraduate degree.
“That’s the big one,” she exclaimed. “It’s a little overwhelming just to think of how much that one scholarship is going to change my life. It just comes as such a relief.”
Shortly before that, the Grade 12 student at St. Albert Catholic High School was awarded the Millar Western Entrance Leadership Scholarship worth $3,500.
At the same time, she was told that she had been chosen as a candidate for the Premier’s Citizenship Award. One such award is available to each high school in the province. If selected for her school, she wins a plaque from Premier Alison Redford, but more importantly, it opens up her eligibility for other awards, including the same prestigious Queen’s Jubilee Citizenship Medal that Sturgeon County’s Madeleine Pawlowski was just awarded.
But that’s not all. These awards and accolades might be the culmination of the many interesting and fruitful experiences that she has had over the last year and a half. In February 2011 she travelled with a group of her classmates to New Orleans as part of her high school’s mission to help with that flood-ravaged city’s long and ongoing clean-up and restoration efforts.
At that time she was Miss Teen St. Albert. She used her time wearing the crown to talk about eating disorders, a problem that many young women are afflicted with, including Peynenburg herself. She was 15 when she started to suffer anxiety, become anorexic, and spent six months on a progressive downslide before getting treatment through the University of Alberta Hospital's Eating Disorder program.
She has since made several presentations to school and other youth groups wherein she talked about the message of how “to be your own kind of beautiful.” She hopes to continue doing that this summer.
Last month she won the 16-to-18 age category of the Leaders of Tomorrow Awards put on by the Community Information and Volunteer Centre.
The praise has gone to her head, it seems, but in a beneficial way.
“I’ve been through a lot growing up. Just to hear the kinds of responses I’ve had from the judges and from my peers, just all the positive things that they’ve been saying have really justified what I’ve been through and have made me come to terms with what I’ve been through.”
At her graduation ceremony a few weeks ago, she was named St. Albert High’s grad of the year. That award also came with a cash prize of $500. She wants to use the money to start a website to help her ‘beautiful’ campaign. Part of this effort is a video that Peynenburg produced about her story and struggles with anorexia.
Once she has gotten through June and all of her remaining final exams, she will look forward to the fall when she will start pursuing a bachelor of arts degree with a major in psychology. That, she says, is where she wants to help others like herself as well as those with other serious issues.
“I would like to become a psychologist at Alberta Hospital. I’m interested in addictions counselling. Obviously, eating disorders are my passion.”
“I guess I have a bit of mixed emotions. At times I don’t feel like I necessarily deserve it. Being associated with the name Terry Fox and doing it in his honour just makes me think about what I’m doing. I don’t really equate myself to be on the same level as him. That people are starting to see what I’m doing – and the promise of what I’m doing – it’s definitely humbling.”
Terry Davies, the executive director of the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award program, praised Peynenburg as an example to other young people for all of her humanitarian and charitable acts including her service work with the Mayor’s Walk, Special Olympics, student council at St. Albert High, Voice for Hunger and the Terry Fox Run, naturally.
“It’s a whole variety … it shows how tremendously balanced she is. Not all of her involvement was in school or in community. It was a broad spectrum, which shows that it’s not a one-shot thing. She has real concern for a whole variety of people who have or face difficulties. Her referees raved about her work ethic.”
She was one of several applicants selected to receive the award this year out of a field of several hundred. Typically about 20 awards are given each year.
To learn more about the award, visit www.terryfoxawards.ca.
