Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful would like to congratulate Ashley Funk, age 18, from Mount Pleasant Area High School in Westmoreland County, who was chosen as the 2012 Sue Wiseman Scholarship recipient.

Ashley founded Pollution Patrol, a club of high school student volunteers who routinely clean up litter and illegal dumps in Mount Pleasant Borough and Township. Ashley worked to establish an effective recycling program at the Mount Pleasant Junior and Senior High schools and assisted Mount Pleasant Borough with launching a curb-side recycling program.

In addition, Ashley has established partnerships throughout the community who support her efforts. Since August 2009, the club has collected 225 bags of trash, 54 bags of recyclables, and 115 tires from the streams, woods, and streets of the community.

“I wanted to spread awareness of the harms of littering in my community, and as a result, inspire the citizens of Mount Pleasant to stop littering,” states Ashley of her goals for creating the club, Pollution Patrol. Ashley will be attending Wellesley College in the fall where she plans on double majoring in Environmental Studies and Political Science.  

Applicants were judged on initiative and self-motivation, ability to demonstrate leadership, commitment to the environment, use of local resources, partnerships formed, and the project’s ability to educate the public.

The Sue Wiseman Scholarship is open to Pennsylvania high school seniors who have initiated and carried out a personal project that addresses one of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful’s focus areas of Prevent It, Clean It, or Keep It.

The scholarship is named for Sue Wiseman, whose own commitment and dedication to a cleaner environment led to the founding of PA CleanWays in 1990, which is now Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, a statewide nonprofit organization whose mission is empowering Pennsylvanians to make their communities clean and beautiful.

The next round of applications is due May 1, 2013.  Application forms are available online or by calling the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful office at 877-772-3673.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has removed over 87,000,000 pounds of trash and 576,264 tires statewide involving over 1,347,786 volunteers.

7/16/2012