DAYTON – Five area high school seniors have earned $1,000 Community Blood Center/Vectren Lead The Way creative scholarships for illustrating giving blood as acts of courage, compassion and celebration in their award-winning blood drive campaigns.
The 2018 Lead The Way winners are Hayley Maher from Greenville Senior High School, Mikayla Schaffner from Miami East High School, Karson Hudson from Valley View High School, Kacie Tackett from Newton High School and Kayla Helmick from Cedarville High School.
Two winners are from Miami County high schools. It’s the third consecutive year a scholarship has gone to a Miami East senior and the second year in a row to a Newton High senior. It’s the first year to have winners from Greenville, Valley View and Cedarville.
Lead The Way applicants were challenged to design a winning marketing campaign for a high school blood drive. They submitted a campaign slogan, explained why it would encourage fellow students to donate, and expressed their campaign theme with one or more innovative and artistic marketing techniques.
Maher is the class of 2018 valedictorian at Greenville Senior High School and has made five lifetime blood donations. Her “Blood Gives” campaign featured a video and it received the highest score from the Lead The Way judges.
“Giving blood is a celebration of the little things in life that recipients of blood donations are able to experience more of,” she wrote. “Birthdays, family vacations, laughs with friends, anniversaries and hundreds of other invaluable life experiences.”
She illustrated the “blood gives more life” theme with a graphic design and in an original video montage of life celebrations. The video also includes facts about blood donations and multiple interviews with classmates about why they donate.
Maher plans to study exercise science at the University of Mount Union with the goal of working in sports medicine.
The $5,000 Lead The Way scholarship program is supported by a grant from Vectren. CBC and Vectren annually award $1,000 in college tuition assistance to five graduating, college-bound seniors whose high school hosts a CBC blood drive.
