Small Town News

Founding of the Great Kids 1st Annual Gala Awards Event

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Great kids are all around us every minute, every day, every week, every month, and the entire year. Those kids are helping to impact their families, their communities, and pave the way to make their lives and those of others better.

The first annual Grand Saline Sun "Search for Great Kids" event was held to honor just a few of this area's best and brightest youth.

Think about how rare it happens that we hear about positive and good things that kids do. But almost always, someone is willing to take time to discuss, record, air, or write about the negative or bad things kids occasionally do. The good really does outweigh the bad, but most of us never hear about those instances. This is why the Grand Saline Sun has jumped on board to eagerly launch this "Search for Great Kids" as an annual event.

The Grand Saline Sun first learned about this through our sister paper, the Standard Freeholder out of Ontario, Canada. They began this event there nine years ago for their community of over 45,000 people.

There are two age groups for nominations, age 6 to 12 and 13 to 18. We asked that Kids be nominated in one of 3 categories:

Cool to be Kind acts of kindness.

Personal Best - successfully balancing academics and life, and

Against all Odds overcoming significant challenges.

This event was all about our kids and grandkids whose kindness, caring, diligence and bravery shined like the stars that they are. Twenty-four kids from age 6 to 18 were honored for their compassion, integrity and community spirit last Saturday evening at a Great Kids Gala Awards Banquet. We're not as big as the newspaper out of Ontario, and could not pull off the grandeur event that they do every year, but we did hold an awesome event.

Any parent, teacher, coach, pastor, civic group, community resident or adult could have nominated a kid who is worthy of this honor. These kids must have been nominated by an adult who described the youth's qualities and achievements.

These local kids do and will continue to creatively serve our communities every year. They are our future leaders. Look around! Who amazes you with what they accomplished in the year 2009?

We invite our readers in the Grand Saline,

Edgewood, and Fruitvale areas next January to pick up a nomination form and nominate that youngster or teenager who has accomplished something great. This recognition could give them the fuel to reach greatness in the future. Recognition will do wonders for these kids. Don't take the position that it's no use or too much effort for you.

A panel of eight judges from areas including Tyler, Martins Mill, Canton, and Van scored every nomination letter on a scale of one to ten with ten being the highest. The top four nominees in each age group and category were recognized at the Gala Event. Our awards ceremony included dinner, entertainment, a guest speaker, and all the semi-finalists received a plaque, certificate, and a gift bag.



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© 2010 Edgewood Enterprise Edgewood, New Mexico. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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