The Judie Aronson Social Justice Initiative committee is pleased to announce its award selections for the 2022-2023 school year. This year’s recipients are: Camden Bernstein from Hilton Head High, Madison Hahn from May River High, and Abigail Nance, also from May River.
Camden, influenced by her mother’s work with special needs’ students, works regularly with students who need extra help. Her endeavors have found outlets in both the fields of dance and photography. She has developed a program for the Island Rec Center in adaptive cheer leading for the coming summer. She also is using her prize winning photography to highlight the cultural heritage of our community. She is planning to attend the College of Charleston, with a major in Studio Arts and a minor in Dance.
Madison, realizing that others in her school community were not as fortunate as she, joined Youth in Government and schooled herself in the kinds of gaps that exist in her community. She strongly supports education reform and spoke at the community meeting to support those opposed to the removal of books from the school shelves. She hopes to become a lifelong advocate of social justice with a goal of practicing law and public policy so that she can be an “advocate for the voiceless and a force for good.”
Abigail is an advocate for socio-economic justice with her work with the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education. She works toward helping students see the value of higher education and how students can avail themselves of that opportunity through the FAFSA program for financial aid. She has been an ambassador for the program both in the school and with her contacts in local media. She will remain an ambassador through her first year in college and then will go on to further her own education so she can continue to target socio-economic injustice in our community.