Kansas City, April 15, 2019 - iCAN Announced the winners of the 2019 Youth Scholarship Award Winners. The Scholarship winners are 14 year-old Kalee Polk from KIDS Georgia and 14 year-old Mary Claire from KIDS Florida.
Polk has been a member of KIDS Georgia since 2014, she attends Mason Creek Middle School as a 7th grader, and is a member of the FBLA club, MCMS choir and Lady Wolves soccer team. Kalee was diagnosed with Biliary Atresia at 2 weeks old and has received two liver transplants. She has participated in clinical trails and travel to different states to represent ican and KIDS Georgia as panel guest. She plans to be a public speaker and use her platform to be an advocate for children and parents improving pediatric healthcare.
Klein a rising freshman from Ave Maria. She loves to be with her friends, babysit, and of course, help out with iCAN! She is about to make the long-distance move from Florida to Iron Mountain, Michigan with her family, where she hopes to be instrumental by using her experience from KIDS Florida in starting a new iCAN Chapter in the upper pennisula, and surrounding rural areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin to help make a positive difference in the lives of children living with chronic, rare, and complicated pediatric illnesses.
Each earned $250 to be applied to their registration at the 5th Annual iCAN Research & Advocacy Summit, to be held in Kansas City, Missouri from June 24th - June 28th, 2019 at the Westin Crown Center, through partnership with KIDS Kansas City.
Both youth members applied in memory of two beloved iCAN youth members, Felix JT from KIDS Barcelona and Kate P from KIDS Illiniois. As both Felix JT and Kate P exhibited courage, strength and a desire to improve pediatric medicine and specificially, childhood cancer, iCAN created a video and essay application in which members could share "How does iCAN inspire you to change the world?" To read/view their essays, visit https://www.icanresearch.org/ican-scholarships
Honorable mention goes to the first runner-ups for the 2019 iCAN Scholarship; Mary Rose Klein, KIDS Florida and Nicole Mendez-Villarrubia, KIDS Illinois for their outstanding submissions.
To meet the scholarship winners and to hear first hand of how our young people are changing the world through sharing their stories, please register for the iCAN Research & Advocacy Summit. Hurry! Reservations are only open through June 1 and discounted hotel rates are filling up fast! Visit https://www.icanresearch.org/2019-summit today.
