Many students put in exceptionally hard work to enrich campus life or take on strong leadership roles to guide new students, and for this they usually receive little recognition. CampusPerks is an organization created to change this, with a focus on rewarding students for their work. Beginning this year, CampusPerks is introducing the Campus Choice Awards as a way to highlight exceptional students who have gone out of their way to improve the atmosphere on campus. To qualify for the Campus Choice Awards, students can create art, plan a school event or take on a creative or entertaining endeavour.
Strangely enough, CampusPerks started by accident. Dave Wilkin, the creator of CampusPerks, was a student at the University of Waterloo. While organizing one of the biggest intramural volleyball tournaments in the school’s history, Wilkin was informed that the tournament would have to be cancelled.
The tournament was unfortunately cancelled at the very last minute due to budget constraints. Wilkin’s devastation led him to start a campaign on Facebook to raise the funds himself, determined to ensure that all his fellow teammates got to play in the tournament they had trained so hard for. His enthusiastic spirit and resolve allowed him to raise the money for the volleyball tournament in just three days.
After the success of his tournament, Wilkin came to the realization that increasingly high tuition fees combined with poor funding for clubs created a huge obstacle for students who wanted to enhance and enrich campus life. This specific incident led to the development and creation of CampusPerks.
Last year CampusPerks partnered up with S-Trip! and awarded a student with a one-year scholarship. The scholarship not only covered their entire tuition fees but also all of their books, set them up with a summer internship and sent the awarded student with three of their friends on a grad trip to the Caribbean. In another case, CampusPerks teamed up with Tourism Australia to send a university travel blogger on a 17-day trip to explore and experience the best of Australia; while they got to blog and document their travels for their classmates and friends back home.
The Campus Choice Awards were launched a few weeks ago, with the intention of highlighting and exposing, as much as possible, all the incredible talent and excellent work that occurs on campuses across Canada. There are five categories, that will be open to applicants at different times during the year.
The first two categories selected to start the awards are Canada’s Best Campus Event and Canada’s Best Artist/Entertainer(s). CampusPerks and Campus Choice Awards representative, Nicolas Petraglia, said, “The reason for starting with these categories is to highlight events before they happen and get artists exposed before the year starts, with hopes to help them get their name known and thus help them promote their future shows, galleries, etc.”
In both categories, students can apply as an individual or as a group. The other categories will be open for applications starting in November, beginning with Team and Clubs Edition, followed by Student Leader Edition running in January, and finally the Athlete Edition in March.
If you have any other questions, the Campus Perks team encourages you to reach out. For any students wanting more information or wondering how to apply, visit their website campusperks.ca and get into contact with their team via email.