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Three Students Awarded Scholarships for 2020 Fall Semester.
The response to the contest was monumental!!! After receiving numerous creative and thought, provoking essays indicative of a great social response, we found it impossible to pick only two winners. Accordingly, we amended our scholarship platform and are providing a $500 scholarship each to THREE impressive individuals for the Fall, 2000 semester as opposed to the original provision for two awards. The winners are: Jessica DeJesus, Nursing Major, Molloy College; Elaina Jowdy, Marketing Major, Penn State University; Ashley Bressingham, Art and Environmental Science Major, SUNY Plattsburgh. Each will receive $500 in scholarship money to help defray the costs of higher education.
“This was a very important endeavor for us as an organization. The more we can build awareness around environmental stewardship, the better the earth will be… this is an investment for future generations,” said Joseph Esposito, President of The Pinnacle Financial Group.
The Subject of the Essay
In their essays, each student wrote poignantly and powerfully about what environmental awareness is and what it means to them and the leadership roles they’ve taken thus far in environmental understanding, sensitivity, and impact. Jessica, Elaina, and Ashley all demonstrated experiential learning in their communities and active leadership in sharing those experiences and concerns with others.
Let The Pinnacle Financial Group Help You Build Your Future
The Pinnacle Financial Group proudly sponsors an annual essay contest that provides scholarship funds to several winners. The contest is open to students enrolled full-time at any accredited college or university in America. Applicants must provide proof of student status when submitting an essay. If selected as the winner, a contestant must provide a valid transcript and copy of a student identification card. Scholarship awards are sent directly to corresponding educational institutions.
The Contest Rules
All essays submitted must:
- Include your name and a valid e-mail address in the upper left hand corner of the first page. A title page is optional.
- Adhere to the requirements of the MLA style book
- Be in an easily readable font with one inch margins, as well as one inch headers and footers. No script fonts, please!
- Draw from the applicant’s own experience. Don’t tell us someone else’s story—tell us yours!
- Be within the prescribed word count restrictions (700-1,000) above
- Be in digital format.
- Be submitted at https://thepinnaclefg.com/college-scholarship/
The Essays
What is environmental awareness and what does it mean to you?
By Ashley Bressingham
Environmental awareness is being conscience of our environment, understanding the vulnerability of and the importance of protecting its safety. This can be accomplished by providing more in-depth and comprehensive education, starting in kindergarten, throughout elementary and secondary education, and by way of workshops and seminars for our elderly citizens. It is imperative to educate the new generation as well as the older generation so that everyone understands how important it is to save our planet from mistreatment, preserve our environment and ensure a healthy world for future generations.
What this means for me is that I must become a leader, I need to take steps to find programs that will inspire and inform others. I know through my ability and passion to help others that I can accomplish this by teaching everyone how to change their habits for the better and spread the word.
What actions do you take on a daily basis that show your concern for the precious environment around you?
I started my journey in my junior year when I joined Team ECHO. Team ECHO is a student-led club in my high school that aims to increase awareness about the environment and take practical steps to improve the community and the planet. Mr. Bob Hempel, an English teacher at Massapequa H.S., is the senior leaders of Team Echo. We discuss and inspire student driven teams to build community awareness about environmental toxicity, and we combine those efforts of raising awareness into an annual fundraiser to benefit children with cancer.
Mr. Hempel recognized my passion and dedication to the group, so mid-way through my junior year, I was asked to become president and lead the group. I continue to hold this position currently in my senior year.
One of the projects that I worked on was a fund raiser for Winthrop’s Kids for Cancer. I helped organize a fishing trip and bake sale. I also visited several local businesses and collected donations which were used to create several gift baskets that we raffled off to raise even more money.
We recently hosted a full-day environmental conference, “All Things Environmental” featuring expert speakers and information booths. Past initiatives have included school campus and beach cleanups as well as tree plantings. The yearly environmental day has grown each year since its inception and this year’s event featured several speakers including Erich Dietterle from the Long Island-based Atlantic Marine Conservation Society. He spoke about his organization’s efforts to promote marine conservation through action and educated students about the sea turtles and marine mammals in New York’s waters that the society strives to protect.
I gave a seminar to the students in my school where I presented about recycling and the importance of disposing plastic and garbage correctly. I created a presentation that demonstrated how destructive and dangerous these plastic items are to the animals and plant life in the ocean. I engaged the students during my presentation by interactive playing games with the winners receiving metal straws.
During awareness week, I also helped to organize speakers such as Christopher Mayer from the Town of Oyster Bay’s Department of Environmental Resources, who spoke about shellfish restoration efforts. Sally Kellogg and Rachelle Neville, from the Long Island South Shore Estuary Reserve, discussed horseshoe crabs. Massapequa High School graduate Joseph Prusan, the valedictorian of the Class of 2016, participated in a video conference with students about his hydroponics research at UCLA. I also coordinated with the science research programs/students in our high school who have environment-focused projects shared their work at an information session in the lobby. These students have been conducting extensive research to try to provide real solutions to environmental issues.
I look forward to continuing my environmental awareness pursuits in college and being a part of a global movement to effect real change.
“Save Our Earth” – Our Home
By Elaina Jowdy
When we talk about our environment, there is one thing that is clear. It is our home. The resources our Earth supplies us are essential for our survival. However, at times our actions can hurt and deplete the environment. Think about the amount of times trees and ecosystems are destroyed in order to build a new store or neighborhood. How many times a day people use plastic water bottles, or drive cars unnecessarily that increases the carbon footprint. These actions indirectly hurt us by directly hurting the earth. Hence, to be aware of our surroundings we need to first be aware of our own actions. Personally, for me to be aware of my own environment I reflect on my daily actions. Overall, the root of this awareness stems from understanding the environment and all that it provides us, which in return will help us understand the importance that our actions, even the small ones, have on the Earth. As humans we are busy. We spend countless hours working, driving from place to place, shopping, going out to eat and traveling. Our world has become fast paced. With one press of a button we get endless opportunities within seconds. While there is nothing wrong with this it has pushed me to feel a constant need for something, and growing impatience. This way of thinking and feeling was my barrier to truly slowing down and enjoying the environment around me. I can spend hours on my phone retweeting and sharing posts of climate change organizations or watch horrendous videos of animals dying and getting displaced from their habitats. While these posts do have an impact on me, the second I click to watch the next video, that feeling I experienced is gone and I am now preoccupied by a new video or picture. In this case, I was conscious of these sad events happening in the environment but I wasn’t truly aware and never took action. Personally, I feel you can never truly f eel or understand something unless you experience it. For example, we can feel sorry or relate to people but in order to connect and be aware we need to take the time to slow down and stop. Henceforth, in order for me to truly be aware of my environment I needed to put down my screen and go out and experience the Earth for myself. Personally, for me taking simple actions such as going on hikes or walks or just sitting outside while writing this essay I am immersed in nature. I am able to appreciate it and take the time to stop. When I slow down my mind wanders I am able to look at all the trees in the forest and think about how many animal species call that their home, I can feel the breeze and hear the frogs croak and the birds chirping. Here is where I am experiencing and aware of the environment we all call home and I appreciate what it gives us. Through taking this time to experience the environment I become more tied to it and more conscious of how my actions affect this beautiful Earth. For me at first, it was hard to comprehend that one person can have such a big impact on the world. I was blinded by the concept that if one person does something it doesn’t matter because in order to make a change everyone has to do something. So why would my small actions make a difference? I soon began to make these small changes such as replacing using plastic water bottles every day with a reusable one. I started limiting my plastic bag usage and would start using containers to carry my food around. While yes, these are small changes I realized that the more often I would continue these practices, the amount of plastic bags and water bottles I avoided using would grow. Just by me using a reusable water bottle I saved 365 plastic water bottles in a year. This truly illustrated the idea that small changes lead to big results over time. I allowed myself to take time to slow down and reflect on little ways I can help the environment. Purely I developed the ability to be conscious and aware of how my direct actions will positively impact the environment around me in a small way. I think about myself and how I individually am influencing the environment It is our turn to take the time to slow down and reflect on what an amazing environment we are immersed in. The birds singing, the beautiful sunsets over the forest green trees, the clear blue lakes and rivers flowing across our planet are beautiful, breathtaking even. Sometimes we forget this place we call home is delicate. We need to start becoming more aware and treating the environment as its delicate self. Ultimately understanding we cannot keep using, exploiting and taking advantage of the place that has given all of us a place to live and flourish.
Save Our Earth
By Jessica DeJesus
The windows were down as I arrived closer and closer to Long Beach on a hot summer morning on Long Island, New York. I grew up in a town that was a ten-minute drive away from the beach. We would park our car at my aunt’s house and walk with my cousins as we argued over who had to carry the boogie boards. When we finally got to the beach, we would all run towards the water because of how hot the sand was on our bare feet, when we got in the salty water, we would all play in the ocean and try to find sand crabs by the shore for hours until the sun started to set and we would grab ice cream from the snack shack. We simply just enjoyed the beautiful world around us and all that it had to offer. I have some amazing memories from all the times I have been to the beach but fast forward ten years and the beach is just not the same, there is trash scattered across the sand and in the ocean, the wildlife is suffering from all of the trash and other forms of municipal pollution from growing communities surrounding the area causing a significant decrease in water quality. In today’s world there is a phrase that seems to be heard in many places such as businesses, politics, social media, etc. Environmental awareness. This phrase refers to the action’s humanity can take to help preserve the beautiful world we live in rather than destroy it. People across the United States hear this term a lot in politics, as it is a common topic between the two major political parties in our government. Some people believe there needs to be strict regulations on businesses that will benefit the Earth, but on the contrary, others believe that forcing businesses to follow such restrictions will leave a negative impact on the economy. Since not every business in the United States has strict regulations that they are forced to follow, I personally do specific things in my daily life to try and do my part in keeping the earth clean and healthy; This includes: using a reusable water bottle everyday rather than using plastic ones, bringing a reusable cup when I go to coffee shops so I do not waste plastic, not using plastic straws if it is not necessary, using hand towels rather than paper towels to dry my hands, making sure garbage is put in the right bin, repurposing things that would be considered “trash”, turning off unnecessary electricity, turning off water when I brush my teeth, saving Tupperware we receive from takeout food, and I plan on using an iPad to take notes in college so I can be as paperless as possible. I choose to make these certain sustainable life choices because plastic is a big issue when it comes to pollution due to the fact that it takes roughly one thousand years to biodegrade, meaning that the first piece of plastic, which was produced in 1907, will take around nine hundred more years until it leaves this earth. Plastic is extremely hard to get rid of because it is not able to be burned, when plastic is burned it releases threatening chemicals into the atmosphere that can be dangerous to humans and wildlife and without the proper disposal it can lead to negative effects like straws hurting ocean wildlife, or birds getting caught in plastic soda can rings. Environmental awareness is important to me because being a teenager in this time period, I hear about many issues concerning the environment and it scares me for not just my future, but the future of the generations after me as well. With new discoveries from federal agencies such as The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or, NASA, I have increasingly become concerned about what my life could be like in the in the upcoming years. As a young adult I still have a lot of time left to spend on this earth. By choosing to be environmentally friendly now, it can help assure that the things I love will still be here when I am older, and protect the way that we are used to living so things do not need to change dramatically, but it w ill take more than just me, many people around the world need to understand the importance of keeping our earth clean so we can have an amazing and fun future not just for us, but for all of the generations to come.
