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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, April 30, 2015 | 24 GenNext honours volunteer efforts of Top 20 Under 40 by Nathan Howes Special to the Beaver For GenNext Oakville, it's important to recognize the unsung heroes in the community who give of themselves to help others. GenNext Oakville is a committee of the United Way Oakville (UWO) that organizes fundraising events, promotes volunteer opportunities and encourages the next generation to contribute to the community. "There are a lot of people who do a lot of work and get a lot of publicity for it, but there's a lot more people who do a lot of great work and don't really get any recognition," said Geoff Gibson, GenNext cabinet chair. GenNext Oakville celebrated the accomplishments of volunteers under the age of 40 at its second annual Top 20 Under 40 Volunteer Awards April 16 at Compass Restaurant. The event drew more than 200 people and recognized 20 individuals, who have given back to the community through volunteering, giving or acting. GenNext Oakville hosted the event during National Volunteer Week (April 12-18) to acknowledge volunteers as Oakville's "real celebrities." "We started this event with the idea to find a way to give back and really honour those people," said Gibson. Among the winners were Ishan and Vishal This year's Top 20 Under 40 Volunteer Award winners. GenNext Oakville celebrated the accomplishments of volunteers under the age of 40 at its second annual ceremony last April 16 during National Volunteer Week April 12-18. | Nathan Howes - special to the Beaver Vijay (TD Canada Trust Award), Calvin Rieder (Ford of Canada Award), Kyle Morrison (Genworth Financial Award) and Renato Medeiros (United Way Oakville Award). Ishan, 12, and Vishal, 14, were honoured for their work with their non-profit organization Children in Action (C.I.A.) ­ a group of more than 40 young social activists who are passionate about children's rights. "When we look alongside our fellow nominees and Top 20 Under 40 recipients, it's an astounding group of people who have all done so much to better our world in their own respective areas," said Vishal. "Just seeing everybody together with the common passion and common goal of making this world a better place is what really inspires me." With three of their friends, the Vijay brothers formed the charity in 2011 with the vision of giving every child access to basic necessities of clean drinking water, food and an education. "To be recognized for our four years of work is very humbling, but I feel it isn't truly for the award itself. It's more for the awareness of the issues and causes that we're passionate about and trying to advocate for," said Vishal. Rieder, 18, a Grade 12 St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School student, garnered the Ford of Canada Award for his efforts to provide universal access to water. "I'm involved in a lot of stuff and you don't really do it for the awards. You do it to give back to the community, locally and globally. It feels really great to receive that acknowledgement," said Rieder. The Oakville student has helped many people in the community, and abroad, with his science creations, including a novel highcapacity solar still, that converts contaminated water to potable water. A sustainable potable system, that extracts moisture from the Earth's atmosphere to produce clean drinking water, said Rieder, is currently in a prototype stage and will be developed further going forward. "In the future, I would really like to see these used in areas that are suffering from the global water crisis," said Rieder, a member of Aquinas' Peace and Justice Club. "I really wanted to do something that helped people or had a strong, dramatic impact on helping a major problem in the world." The ceremony also featured a keynote address from James Temple, who leads corporate responsibility at PwC Canada and is considered a leader on corporate social innovation. Temple said one in three people uses services from the more than 30 charity agencies the United Way Oakville supports, which is more than 30,000 people. see Top on p.25 flyers. coupons. deals. savings tips. DON'T JUST DO LAUNDRY CONQUER IT. Get this coupon at www.save.ca/oxicleanlaundry *Coupons subject to availability.