What They're Looking For
Disabilities: Chronic Medical/Health Problem
Study Year: Grade 12
Province: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, or Ontario
About Scholarship
The HOPE Scholarship Program highlights the personal triumphs of young adults who face the many responsibilities associated with diabetes management significantly enriching their lives through community and extra-curricular activities and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Each of these young adults has accomplished what others in their position try to do: they have allowed themselves to be people with diabetes with hopes and plans to succeed and pursue life’s challenges. They are not diabetics with a disease that defines them.
Over the last 21 years, Diabetes Hope Foundation has been successful in engaging more youth from across the country through the expansion and growth of the Scholarship program across Canada.
About Company
HEALTH, OPPORTUNITY, POWER & EXCELLENCE SINCE 1999
Diabetes Hope Foundation (DHF) is a grassroots not-for-profit organization founded by its current chair, Barbara Pasternak, in 1999 after two of her sons were diagnosed with diabetes. The foundation’s mission is to reward, empower and provide peer education and support for youth in transition to enable them to live successfully WITHIN and BEYOND diabetes.
Recognizing the need for supporting transitioning youth who are struggling with the financial and emotional challenges of living with a long-term chronic illness, DHF achieves its mission through the delivery of community Scholarship, Mentorship, Transition Workshop and Alumni Peer Support programs, otherwise not accessible to these youth.
Working closely with Ontario’s network of pediatric diabetes healthcare centres, the goal of supporting this high needs group is to ensure that youth thrive and succeed beyond their diabetes remains strong nearly 20 years later. The foundations’ programs and services are driven, developed, and funded BY the Community FOR the Community.
With a renewed groundswell of commitment to improve services in the community for at-risk and transitioning teens, the Foundation will continue to work with a cross-generation of DHF Alumni and community partners to develop innovative youth-led community initiatives that will support the unique needs of transitioning teens living with diabetes.
Support from community partners, corporate sponsors, and families are critical to the success of DHF community programs for youth with diabetes, and as we celebrate our 20th Anniversary, we will continue to build upon our legacy of providing hope and inspiration for the most hard-to-reach youth with diabetes in our community.
Your support helps the diabetes community continue to grow, thrive and succeed as the foundation responds to the ever changing needs of youth living with diabetes by providing ongoing programs and support when and where they need it most.