When it comes to preserving our environment, Fatima Khan is a big believer in the importance of awareness. "I've always been interested in the environment," she says. "But when I was younger, I didn't really know what I was capable of doing. I didn't do anything (to help the environment), therefore I thought I couldn't do anything."
Since those days, Fatima has put in the work and realized that she can, and will, do a great deal to help the environment. At the ripe old age of 17.
In the past couple years, Fatima has wracked up some impressive accomplishments for anyone, let alone someone who just graduated high school. She served as chairwoman of the Brant Community Foundation's youth advisory committee, where she recruited other young people to volunteer for green activities such as tree-planting. She lobbied her local MPP about starting a composting program in Brantford. She was chosen as the January 2008 "Flicker of the Month" by FLICK OFF, a Canadian website dedicated to environmental awareness and action. And she founded Green It Up!, an environmental club at her high school, North Park Collegiate.
Through Green It Up!, Fatima implemented her school's first official recycling program. She also brought Project Porchlight to North Park Collegiate. In December 2007, Fatima led the club in delivering hundreds of free CFLs throughout Brantford.
All that hard work really paid off. Thanks to her environmental efforts, Fatima recently received two big scholarships towards her degree in Environmental Studies at York University, which she'll begin this September.
One is a $4,000 entrance scholarship from the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation in recognition of Fatima's citizenship, academic achievements and innovative ideas. The Foundation hands out approximately 1,000 awards each year to Canadian students, selected from 11,000 applicants.
The other is the Visionary Leadership Scholarship, a $38,000 award that is given annually to one first-year York University student. This scholarship requires that the recipient create and implement a four-year project throughout the course of their undergraduate degree. Fatima's project, of course, will have an environmental focus.
Fatima feels that her experience working with Project Porchlight helped her secure the scholarship. "Obviously when they were looking for someone to do this project, they were looking for someone who has a specific area of interest," she says. "A lot of my work was environmental and I did mention Project Porchlight because of course that's an environmental project."
The success Fatima had in high school with initiatives such as Project Porchlight encouraged her to examine what she could do to help the environment in the future. "I started to research what was out there in terms of post-secondary education and the environment," she says.
After learning about the environmental studies programs available, she settled on a career path: environmental lawyer. Fatima is committed to informing others about the ability they have to change, and showing them how to get started. She says that Project Porchlight opened her eyes to the power each person has to inspire others to take action. "If you go out there and take the initiative," she says, "people will respond. You just have to kind of push them and motivate them."
For now, though, she's taking the rest of the summer off. In between researching and planning her environmental project, that is. Just imagine what she'll accomplish with a law degree under her belt.
