The Junior League of Westchester on the Sound (JLWOS) proudly announced four winners of its annual Marge Manley Scholarship Awards on June 3 in a special reception dedicated to the four exceptional students it recognized. The Marge Manley Scholarship was established in 1998 in honor of a JLWOS member who passed away and whose family dedicated the award to recognize graduating Sound Shore high school students with exemplary community service records. 

In a very competitive year for the scholarship program, the JLWOS awarded a winner and three finalists who demonstrated strong leadership skills and recorded many volunteer hours while continuing their studies in the JLWOS service area. 

The award’s winner, Maxwell Robinson, graduated from Mamaroneck High School (MHS) in June, and he has provided multifaceted service to the Sound Shore community through his culinary and organizing skills. 

First, he and his team of over 150 volunteer members have created more than 700 individualized cakes and 8,000 desserts to be delivered to the United Community Center of Westchester, by way of the nonprofit organization that he founded, Cakes for Communities. His nonprofit was born out of Robinson’s observation that desserts are often a forgotten category in the world of charitable giving. His organization has raised and donated more than $20,000 and formed partnerships with seven other charities. (Visit www.cakesforcommunities.com to learn more about Cakes for Communities.) 

In addition to his work with Cakes for Communities, Robinson served as the President of MHS Chapters of the Midnight Run and of Spiral Giving. He was also instrumental in the effort to install solar panels at MHS as a green solution to the school’s energy usage. Finally, he organized the first TED Talk to be held in Westchester County, inviting experts, including CEOs of multi-billion-dollar companies, artists, and journalists to address the issues of climate change, and he secured CNN’s Chief Climate Correspondent to serve as moderator. 

The award’s finalists included Annie Gombiner, a graduating senior at New Rochelle High School, who stood out for her dedication to our elder community. Gombiner completed all three awards from the Girl Scouts, including earning her highest award through Words to the Wise, a group she founded as a result of an encounter with an elderly lady who was short on visitors and conversations. Gombiner met with her several times and learned how severely loneliness can impact our elderly community. She then partnered with DOROT, a Jewish nonprofit focused on elderly social isolation, to hold monthly social gatherings and facilitate letter writing for a group of twenty-two older adults and teenagers. After the first year of the program, she institutionalized Words to the Wise at DOROT. In addition to the impact Gombiner has created with Words to the Wise, she has also served as a volunteer with Song Catchers, in New Rochelle, where she volunteered over 200 hours teaching violin lessons to children in their Early Violin Summer Program. 

Ava Dee, a graduating senior from New Rochelle High School, was another scholarship finalist, demonstrating strong leadership, evidenced by her Girl Scout Gold award. Her Girl Scout project focused on making dance more accessible for children receiving special education in the Sound Shore community. She identified the dance company that would thoughtfully support children in the special needs community, she considered the materials that might be needed to facilitate the experience for the children, and she supported them with dance steps that were designed specifically for them.

 Her thoughtfulness ensured that the children were set up to succeed in preparing and executing a dance in front of an audience that included their delighted parents. Dee also participated in the Westchester County Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center’s (HHREC) High School Living History Project, an intergenerational program that brings together students and the children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Through this project, she met with children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and committed to sharing their stories, resulting in her creation of a children’s book. Dee noted that while there are hundreds of resources for adults to learn about the Holocaust, there are far fewer ways for children to learn about it, and she sought to create a book that would introduce children to the Holocaust in a simple way that they would understand.

Noe Winter-Hamaoui was also a finalist for the JLWOS award, a graduating senior at Mamaroneck High School who completed her Girl Scout Gold award by identifying a way for people to dispose of their fishing lines properly, without creating catastrophic damage to wildlife. She had noticed that discarded fishing lines were causing injury or death to wildlife in local Sound Shore waters, and she proposed a solution to install recycling containers for the monofilament fishing lines. She met with the Village of Mamaroneck’s biologist and a team of volunteers at the Marine Center who will check on these containers once a month,  empty the containers, weigh the product, and then send the fishing line off to the recycling center. A brochure was also designed to educate the community on the dangers that discarded fishing lines can pose to our Sound Shore ecosystem.

The JLWOS is thrilled to be able to recognize such stellar leaders through its Scholarship Program. The next cycle will begin in early 2025. 

Visit www.jlwos.org to learn more about the JLWOS.