On May 30, 2019, the Rising Stars Foundation held our inaugural Night of Excellence. The event at the Caboto Centre was a wonderful celebration of the outstanding achievements of young student athletes and student teachers/coaches in our community. Initially our goal was to raise ten thousand dollars to be donated to support student leaders in need. Through the generous contributions of local supporters and local businesses, we were thrilled to nearly double that initial goal and donate nearly $20,000.00 in scholarships and bursaries to worthy award recipients! At our Night of Excellence, the Rising Stars Foundation was proud to inspire our community through the promotion of the uplifting stories from our outstanding group of young men and women who are truly Rising Stars of our community! These Rising Stars included University students, graduating grade 12 students, and an outstanding group of young high school student athletes. At the conclusion of the evening, nearly three hundred in attendance were left uplifted by the positive examples of people in our community making a difference, and well fed after a delicious meal from Sorrento’s!
The Rising Stars Foundation is a grassroots non-profit organization led by young professionals in our community. Our mission is simple; to inspire social change in our community through the promotion of leadership and community values provided to a young person through participation in sport. To be a Rising Star in terms of a student athlete or student teacher/coach is to be a leader who is using sport to improve your life, the life of your family, and the life of our community. At our Night of Excellence, the Rising Stars Foundation was pleased to promote the work we believe to be essential to helping young people become stars. These three pillars of success include our mentorship program, scholarship/bursary program, and community outreach program.
At the conclusion of the Night of Excellence, various generous donations were made in order to help further establish a general operating fund for our Foundation. This operating fund helps us provide sports outreach camps throughout Manitoba. These programs include our RSF ARK Porgram and RSF Summer Camps Programs. Each program focuses on promoting our pillars for student success throughout Manitoba. ARK, or Acts of Random Kindness provides Rising Stars Students the chance to use their place in our community to make our world a better place. Our Summer Camps Program is an opportunity for Rising Stars students and mentors to visit communities in our Province to promote sport as an agent of positive social change.
The Rising Stars Foundation believes in the words of Mahatma Gandhi that we must "be the change that we wish to see in the world.” We are thankful for all our supporters who have helped make our inaugural Night of Excellence and Foundation possible. We are especially thankful for the opportunity to promote our young Rising Stars, each dedicated to living an empowered life with the knowledge that hard work and putting team/community first, they can live up to the words of Gandhi and do the same!