We are pleased to announce the winners for the first of three essay contests for 2019. Before we announce the winners , we wanted to sincerely thank everyone that participated in the essay contest. 
Many of you shared very personal stories of the loss and pain experienced as a result of a motor vehicle accident. We wanted express our gratitude to you for sharing these personal experiences as difficult as it may have been to have written about them. Sharing your stories helps to educate others on the true implications of being involved in an accident and hopefully will prevent similar occurrences happening in the future. There were also many well written and researched essays which required time and effort to compose, and we wanted thank those of you who invested the time and effort to research the matter and submit an essay based on your findings. There is no simple answer to the question, how can driver education possibly save more lives? It requires a societal effort to truly tackle this issue. As many of you pointed out, the responsibility also lies in those who provide driver education. For us to make the content more engaging and reflective of the needs of today’s youth. And to somehow adapt the teaching so that it gets through better. This makes a lot of sense and will be followed through. Another important point made was that parents are also responsible for modeling proper driving behavior, and if this behavior is instilled at a young age, then there is a greater chance that the child will be grow up to be a more responsible driver. This is a great insight and one which parents should definitely take heed of. In addition to these well made points, there were numerous well thought out tips and suggestions given for being a more responsible and safer driver. We hope people will continue to read and share these essays as there is lot of wisdom within them. We will definitely continue to share your thoughts on how we all can make a difference in reducing the amount of pain and suffering caused as a result of accidents which could have been avoided.
And now to announce the winners for this contest. For most shared essay,with a whopping 13,175 shares, Endily Garcia, “A Trip to Tomorrow”. In the essay, Endily writes about growing up in the Dominican Republic and the process of learning to drive there. Thank you for sharing your story Endily, great job!
For our staff favorite, and this by no means was an easy choice, Season Cotterell, “Distracted Driving Risks”. Season was able to share personal insight into the issue of driver distraction having unfortunately been involved in accident at young age due to another driver changing the radio station while driving. Our intention is not to award someone for having been involved in an accident, the essay also contained valuable statistics on the number of injuries as a result of driver distraction and emphasized the value of driver education, in addition to providing good suggestions on being a better and safer driver. Thank you for sharing your story Season!
Great job to the both of you and congratulations!
We say this every year, but it bears repeating. Ideally there would be no need for scholarship contests, and each and every citizen would be assured a free college education.
As you know, a high school degree does not go too far these days, and to limit one’s access to a good education and their God given potential because of a lack of resources is truly unjust when we have the means to provide otherwise. So, this is also up to you — to declare that you wish for a college education be granted as a right for all and not just an option for some. You all will soon be or are now of voting age and your views can be put into law to bring about a better future for your generation and generations to come. I do hope you will get involved in bringing about this change. Bless you all. Thanks again to all participants.
