Brian Smeenk in Toronto. He started the Merit Award Bursary Program in the mid-1990s. It awards up to $3,000 in scholarships to hundreds of high school students across Toronto. This year, he also completed a 2,500-km bike ride to raise money for the program.Supplied
The organizer: Brian Smeenk
The pitch: Creating the Merit Award Bursary Program
Brian Smeenk can still remember the time he attended a Little League all-star game in Toronto with his son and heard another father brag about how his family would “all be okay” once his son turned professional.
“I went home and said to my wife, ‘How can people think this way and don’t they understand? They’ll all be okay if Johnny gets a good education,’” Mr. Smeenk said. “And it made me realize that we don’t do a lot with kids to promote education the same way we promote sports.”
Mr. Smeenk, 70, recalled how his parents immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands after the Second World War and always stressed the importance of education. He took that to heart and went on to a successful career as a labour lawyer in Toronto.
In the mid-1990s, he started talking to educators about ways to encourage high-school students to focus on their studies as much as their extracurricular activities. That led to the creation of the Merit Award, a bursary program that recognizes students who excel in academics as well as other activities such as sports, the arts or community service.
“We look at it not as the top students in high school but rather as a student who, along with everything else, shows dedication to their own education and advancement,” he explained.
Since its inception in 1996, the program has grown from awarding 20 bursaries annually to more than 300. The organization also distributes dozens of used laptops to students in need. The aim of the bursaries is to help defray the cost of postsecondary study and the amounts range from $1,000 to $5,000.
The charity relies on around $500,000 in annual donations and for the past two years Mr. Smeenk has raised money through a cycling event. This year, he cycled 2,500 kilometres around Southern Ontario and collected $84,000.
Mr. Smeenk said the group deliberately keeps the Merit Awards relatively small in order to help as many students as possible. “It means that we’re convincing a lot of students to really double up their motivation to get their postsecondary degree, and it means that we’re helping them get there,” he said. “So it’s really meaningful. It feels good.”