SON students earns award for community service
Third-year striker and School of Nursing student Jessie Noseworthy of the Memorial Sea-Hawks is the 2015 student-athlete community service award recipient.
This is the third time a member of the Memorial squad has earned the honour, with Samantha Hansford and Leslie Pope winning the community service award in 2010 and 2009, respectively.
Ms. Noseworthy is an exemplary student-athlete, balancing athletics, academics and extensive community involvement. The nursing student is a long-time volunteer with the Easter Seals program, teaching weekly swim lessons to children with physical and mental disabilities, including children with brittle bone syndrome, autism, and neuromuscular disorders.
She volunteers with the Ronald McDonald House Home for Dinner Program, where she and other varsity student-athletes cook meals for families whose children are undergoing treatment at the Janeway Child Health Centre. Ms. Noseworthy is a volunteer in the palliative care unit at the Health Sciences Centre.
A driving force behind the Street Reach Christmas Stockings drive, Ms. Noseworthy is in her second year of coordinating the initiative in which the Memorial varsity athletics community collects personal care items and small gifts to put together Christmas stockings for a local organization.
This initiative supports young people who are struggling with food security, lack of safe and affordable housing, live in poverty, have low literacy skills, have mental health issues, and have limited or no access to a strong social support network.
In June 2015, Ms. Noseworthy travelled on a four-week volunteer trip to India. Spending her time in a small Tibetan refugee village in Northern India, she taught English to young boys at a local monastery, as well as joining a local doctor on a health campaign.
She travelled to different Tibetan schools, monasteries and seniors' homes to assist a local physician with physical assessments on patients, conducted English conversation classes in small villages, and played cricket, volleyball and soccer with local children at the end of their school day.
Along with some of her teammates, Ms. Noseworthy has volunteered with the Association for New Canadians to coordinate and organize a food drive at home soccer games, with all food collected donated to the annual Thanksgiving dinner.
"We are very proud of Jessie and all that she accomplishes," said Memorial Sea~Hawks head coach Mike Power. "She is a tremendous leader in our community and on our team. Jessie's output as a student-athlete is extremely impressive and we are thrilled she has been honoured with this award."
Ms. Noseworthy is now the AUS nominee for the Canadian Intervarsity Sport (CIS) student-athlete community service award. The most recent recipient of the CIS award from the Atlantic conference was Acadia's Caoimhe MacParland who earned the honour last season.
Only one Memorial standout has won the national honour, with Samantha Hanaford earning it in 2010.