Student Civic Award of Excellence

Sunday, 21 September 2014 at 07:40

St. Mary's Catholic high school graduate gets the honours for his humanitarian work, academic and athletic excellence.

WOODSTOCK- John Vu's highschool career may be over, but his desire to make a difference is ongoing. The St. Mary's Catholic High School graduate started collecting baseball equipment for children in the Dominican Republic. While visiting the country Vu noticed children were getting injured because they had no equipment. "They wanted to play baseball but they didn't have the equipment, so they would just play with a stick and a bottle cap and that really touched me and when I came back to Canada I wanted to see if I could do anything, so I started collecting baseball gloves, balls, bats, anything to ship them over to the Dominican."

His humanitarian work is a small fraction of what the young man has accomplished. Vu has shown academic excellence, skill with the violin (performing at his church) and participating on a number of sports teams at St. Mary's Catholic High School, including; basketball and volleyball. Woodstock City Council chose Vu out of a number of candidates for the Student Civic Award of Excellence.

The soft-spoken first year McMaster student was surrounded by his parents and friends when he was presented with the award. "This means a lot to me, I have a lot of people to thank for this award; my parents, my school, everyone that supported me through all the projects that I did, it just shows that one person can make a big difference," Vu added. "Through everything I did I could see that it really impacted peoples lives that that meant a lot to me."

His humanitarian efforts didn't stop with the Dominican Aid project, he now has his eye on helping another country. "I plan to continue collecting baseball equipment, that is ongoing and I actually went to Vietnam this summer and I might start another project with a group of kids in Vietnam- they were the same situation they had nothing, so I might start collecting for them as well."

Vu says baseball equipment donations can be dropped off at his church Holy Trinity Parish at 1420 Devonshire Avenue.