Norton Award Winner

The 2011 Winner of the Norton Award is Jocelyn B from Mountain Laurels. Below is her winning essay.

This year I wanted to help rasie money to get my best friend, Ashley M, to Camp Carefree. I also wanted to raise money for my cousin, Ashley A, because when I was diagnosed her and her mom paid the deposit for me to get me into camp. This made me want to raise money for them and me.

My mom and I started to think of ideas. We could do bake sales, car washes, etc, but then one day my mom came up with the idea to do bracelets. I chose to make them green and white, for Camp Carefree, and put my slogan "Alivabetes". We bought 1000 bracelets.

After that we thought it would be cool if we put the story of why we chose to put "Alivabetes" on the bracelet. So we put it on a business card and started a web-site Alivabetes.com.

Once it all came in we started to sell. We gave some to my dad and he sold them at work. Some people took extra to sell and gave us the money they got. My mom sold some at work. My brother and I sold some at school. I gave some to Ashley, and Ashley, and they both sold some too. The last place that we sold bracelets was at the rest area in Bow. We made a lot of money there. One day we even met Steven Tyler! We gave him a bracelet and that night we saw him wear it on American Idol, it was really cool!

In all we made over 2100 dollars. It was a lot fo fun and I'm glad I could help raise awareness about Type 1 diabetes and what Camp Carefree is all about. I was also happy I could raise tuition money.

The 2011 Winner of the Norton Award Honorable Mention is Ashley A from Steel Magnolias. She wrote an essay to nominate Jocelyn for the Norton Award. Her essay is below.

My name is Ashley A and this will be my 6th summer at Camp Carefree. My cousin, Jocelyn B did a huge thing for me, herself, and her friend also attending camp this year, Ashley M. She took some time to make bracelets that said "Alivabetes" on them instead of "diabetes". She did this so diabetes sounds better. Alive, die. Get it? But anyways she collected money and donations for the bracelets and for camp raising hundreds and hundreds of dollars. All this money benefited us 3 girls and the camp. Jocelyn, Ashley, and myself all got a little bit of money to help pay for our tuition to camp. The rest of the money went straight to Camp Carefree! Even though me and Ashley would help Jocelyn from time to time, Jocelyn was the one who ultimately did all the work. I couldn't be any more proud of her and what she did to help me and Ashley along with the Camp. So I would like to nominate Jocelyn B for the Norton Award! :-)