Last night we had the honor and pleasure of awarding the third annual recipients for Jaidon’s Scholarship. This year Kyra, our oldest daughter took the stage and presented the awards.
The recipient of The 2024 Jaidon Joseph Smith Educational Scholarship Award was presented to Riley Williams. This award was given in recognition of Ryley’s academic excellence in a traditional classroom setting while using his unique GT/LD abilities and skills to excel through high school and move forward to apply them at the collegiate level. Riley has shown enormous growth academically, socially and personally and we feel like he most embodies what this scholarship was created for, to honor and reward a student, much like Jaidon, who overcome great hurdles to succeed.
The decision between these stellar candidates was incredibly challenging and as a result we would like to acknowledge another student as the recipient of The 2024 Jaidon Joseph Smith Educational Kickstart Scholarship Award. This award was presented to Williem “Teke” Helms. This award is being given in recognition of Teke’s academic excellence in a traditional classroom setting while using his unique GT/LD abilities and skills to apply at the collegiate level. Like Jaidon and Riley, Teke has also overcome great hurdles to succeed.
Additionally, there were two students that we felt also needed to be recognized for their accomplishments, Skylar Walcoff and Suryan Plenz.
This year we also introduced a new award, the EMBARK award. We are pleased to recognize Dylan Stumpe as our first recipient.
We wish all of these young men a lifetime of success.
We would like to thank all of you who have donated to this and especially thank our 2024 Scholarship Selection Committee & Board Members for their time and expertise in determining the awardees, Benita Cohen, Nancy Edwards, Jeanne Ellinport, Jacob Hartranft, Jenna Landy, Shari Perry, Kyra Smith, Laylie Smith, Troy Smith, Debbie Szyfer, and Rochelle Vega, because without you all it would not have been possible to honor Jaidon’s legacy.