Amanda Bembenek: “Our World, Our Choice, Our Future”

By: John Iwanski

Amanda Bembenek has always wanted to be an elementary school teacher. It comes as no surprise then that she spends much of her free time working with children in various volunteer capacities. This Senior 4 Sisler High School student has been dedicating her efforts in this way since entering Senior 2.

It all started when Amanda stepped forward and volunteered her services at the Public Library. Subsequent to that, she began sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for learning at Prairie Rose School, where she helped out in the “I’m Thumbody” program. In her work with the grade three students she loves to celebrate the belief that everyone is unique.

For the past two years Amanda has also been involved in the “Exile for a While” program, a refugee camp simulation in which over two hundred students participated, raising their awareness of the suffering that goes on in refugee camps around the world . In her first year of involvement in this program, she was a volunteer, but last year she stepped up and became one of the main organizers.

This year, Amanda has co-organized a Ukranian Dance Group at Sisler, which is a multicultural school with students from all over the world coming together and sharing their culture. On December 12 this dance group, which involves many non-Ukranian students who have learned to dance, performed at the grand opening of our new performing arts theatre.

The Overseas Education Fund, known as OSEF, is an organization that Amanda is very proud to be associated with. As one of the group’s initial organizers, she and OSEF have raised over five thousand dollars to support daycares in the Phillipines. This organization has grown from a membership of six students when it began to over fifty students, who continue to raise funds. Now, she and a group of students are training younger students to continue the work when they have graduated.

Amanda and her partner have coined the phrase, “Our World, Our Choice, Our Future,” and with people like her leading the way, the future looks quite promising.