Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is now accepting applications for the Sue Wiseman Scholarship, an annual $1,000 scholarship that recognizes youth who have demonstrated leadership and shown exceptional commitment and dedication to improving their community.   Applications are due May 1.

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.

Projects can include, but are not limited to: community cleanups, plantings and beautification efforts, community recycling efforts, community education, or other ways to make your community clean, beautiful, and vibrant. Projects that improve and involve the community and whose benefits are long lasting will be given precedence.

Since 2003, many wonderful applications have been submitted. 

The 2011 Sue Wiseman Scholarship recipient was Ross Levin, who designed, developed, and implemented a student run, organic vegetable garden to provide locally grown, healthy food to the student body while educating the broader community in Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County. 

The 2012 recipient, Ashley Funk, founded Pollution Patrol, a club of high school student volunteers who routinely clean up litter and illegal dumps in Mount Pleasant Borough and Township, Westmoreland County. Ms. Funk also worked to establish an effective recycling program at the Mount Pleasant Junior and Senior High schools and assisted Mount Pleasant Borough with launching a curbside recycling program.

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.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has removed over 96,924,376 pounds of trash and 651,409 tires from the Pennsylvania landscape. Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful’s community-based approach has involved 1,511,221 volunteers.

Application forms are available online or by calling the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful office at 877-772-3673. 

3/11/2013