Regular readers of this column will remember that we featured the SuperPages Make It Real Essay/Scholarship Contest when it was first announced last March and we named SuperPages our first ever, corporate Neighbourhood Hero for coming up with this powerful, community-based, win/win project.

With $7,000 in scholarship money as an incentive, Grade 12 graduating students from our district were asked to write a one thousand word essay starting with the sentence, "If I had $3,500 to improve my community, I would ...".

The challenge was to identify a real, "doable", community project and become its champion. A $5,000 SuperPages scholarship, plus $3,500 to make their project real, hung in the balance. Lesser scholarships were made available for the runners up.

Time has passed and the winners were announced at the recent School District # 68 honours night.

Sitting in the front row, I could hear that the audience of six or seven hundred parents and friends were impressed with the idea behind the contest when it was described and they were even more impressed when they learned that the contest winner would receive the largest scholarship to be given out that night.

Dover Bay's Chris Niewiadomski won the $5,000 scholarship plus $3,500 to make his landscaping project at Tillucum Haus real.

Meghan Swanson (Wellington) was the $1,000 winner and Chris Becir (Woodlands) and Harrison Stevens (NDSS) each received $500.

In his essay, Niewiadomski made a powerful case in support of his proposal to improve the landscaping around the Tillicum Haus Health Centre, located in the historic (1891) Methodist church on Haliburton Street.

Chris' proposal was well researched, definitely "doable", supported by the staff at Tillicum Haus, carefully budgeted -- down to the last ivy plant -- and there's no doubt that it will have a sustainable impact on the community. These were the criteria the judges, all local people including yours truly, were given.

Executive Director, Dave Johnson was quick to confirm that although they have other, more pressing priorities inside the building, in his opinion, the landscaping improvements will have a strong, positive influence on staff, clients and the community as a whole.

"We have a lot of home owners who do a good job with their landscaping," Johnson added but there are other rental homes that could be improved and this project just might be the spark that is needed to make that happen.

In his essay, Chris argued that the project is important because, from the outside, Tillicum Haus looks, "... dingy and run-down, a sadly misleading appearance for a care centre that helps so many people ... It is quite tastefully decorated on the inside," he added.

Chris' plans include six cedar saplings, two apple trees, four holly shrubs, ten half-barrel flower baskets with assorted flowers, fifty railway ties for borders around walkways and gardens, a nine foot by nine foot cement pad for a picnic table and chairs, four benches and much more including holly plants to replace the holly that used to climb the front of the building.

If you have time, take a drive by in the next week or so and then check back when the project is completed. I'm sure we'll all be impressed.

Once again, a special congratulations to the managers at SuperPages for encouraging our young people to take a closer look at their communities to see what they might be able to do to make a difference.

No doubt the most important payoff from this project will come some years from now when, year after year, SuperPages Make It Real participants begin to enter the workforce with one eye on their job and the other looking opportunities to help improve their local communities.