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Laverne Stewart

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Amy Welcher says she feels as though she's won the lottery. This Fredericton High School graduate is now at Sheridan College and is enrolled in its musical theatre performance degree program. The entire cost of her education there has been paid for through the Garfield Weston Award.

The scholarship will pay for her tuition, living expenses and many other additional perks such as mentorship programs and leadership conferences. In total, she says, this amounts to approximately $80,000.

Welcher applied for the scholarship at the end of March. She learned she'd won it just before her final high school exam.

"I just wanted to cry. I didn't even know what to say. I just kept saying thank you because what else do you say? It is allowing me to follow my dreams and to do it debt-free."

As a requirement of the scholarship, she must show that she is engaged in a community leadership role. Welcher is doing this as a Girl Guide/Sparks unit leader. Being involved in Girl Guides of Canada as a kid and as a junior leader, she says, was one of the reasons she was selected as the scholarship's recipient.

From the time she was very young, Welcher says, she knew she wanted to pursue a performance career. This is her first time away from Fredericton. She misses home but, she says, she has no time to be homesick.

Her schedule is intense. She has also been cast in a lead role in a production at Ontario's Royal Winter Fair, which is one of the biggest agricultural fairs in North America. It stages a professional musical production each year.

Welcher was invited to audition and was hired for this year's show.

After a full day of class she goes to those rehearsals, which don't end until 11:30 p.m. But Welcher isn't complaining. She's having the time of her life and is loving every minute of it, she says.

Once the Royal Winter Fair show is finished on Nov. 15, she will be able to concentrate solely on her studies, she says.

Her father, John Welcher, says he and Amy's mother are thrilled for the opportunity their daughter has been given.

Amy was one of hundreds across the country who applied for this scholarship. There were 1,500 applications for the musical theatre performance program at Sheridan and only 400 people were invited to audition. Welcher was one of 35 to be accepted into the program, her father says.

"We are very proud of what she has accomplished. She has done all of this work on her own. When both of our kids were growing up we put them in every type of program we could imagine. This is finally what she got into and she enjoyed it."

Where does his daughter's extraordinary talent come from?

"I don't sing or dance and I can't carry a tune in a bag. I think a lot of it is on her mother's side. Her mother and aunts sing and Amy has taken it to the next level. We keep looking at one another and say 'We must have done something right.'"

Fredericton optician Ross Sherwood will leave for India to distribute glasses

Ross Sherwood, who works at Pearle Vision in Fredericton, will join 37 other company employees from across the country for a trip to India where they will help to distribute 16,000 pairs of glasses to people who need them.

The group will travel to Jodhpur and into surrounding villages where these glasses will be fitted to people who need them.

Last year Sherwood was one of many volunteers who distributed glasses in Thailand. He recalls one young girl whose vision was very poor. When he found a prescription match for her with feminine frames, he knew she would love them.

What was so heartwarming, he says, was the girl's reaction after he placed the glasses on her face.

It was the first time in her life that this young girl was able to see clearly.

"She looked at me and blinked and then she looked over my shoulder and this great big smile came on her face. That was the moment I was there for. You want to be able to help people see the world for the first time."

Sherwood says he hopes to have more of these moments while he is in India. He wants people to know how important it is to donate their glasses to mission trips such as this. Glasses that are donated to Pearle Vision, he says, will be recycled and distributed to people around the world that cannot access them.

"Forty weeks a year our company is in India, Thailand, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Mexico, Africa, China and many other countries.

"The company also does 10 North American missions where we set up right on the street and we test people's eyes and give them, in some cases, brand new glasses."

Laverne Stewart is a staff writer at The Daily Gleaner. If you've got an interesting tidbit to share, please contact her at stewart.laverne@dailygleaner.com. Did You Hear? appears every Friday.