Two New Dawn employees receive NextGen Cape Breton Vital Awards

Vital Awards

On Friday, November 8th, community members gathered at Centre 200 for the 2019 NextGen Vital Awards to celebrate the success and talents of Cape Breton’s exceptional youth between the ages of 16 and 40.

Two remarkable New Dawn employees, Savannah Anderson, Coordinator of The Convent, and Emma Jarrott, Coordinator of The Good Food Bus, accepted Vital Awards under the employee category.

The Vital Employee Excellence Award recognizes employees who have played a vital role in their workplace in Cape Breton.

Savannah Anderson, The Convent Coordinator

Savannah — whom you can find at the New Dawn Centre finalizing the operational plans for theconvent.ca for when she takes on her new role as Manager — has been busy working with The Convent’s design team and learning about all the many pieces that go into creating and maintaining an arts centre.

“It was always important to me to find work that would allow me to stay in Cape Breton, and as a young person with a passion for art, I was worried that I might have to leave home one day to find a job in that sector,” says Savannah.

“I feel beyond privileged to have found my career with New Dawn, not only because it allows me to help grow our island’s vibrancy and work with incredibly inspiring people, I get to do so through supporting and celebrating artists and their work and enabling them to stay here too. To be described as vital in and through my role is such an honour.”

The Convent aspires to provide a welcoming place in which artists can collaborate, work, develop and hone their craft, and share their work with local and visiting publics in an affordable and modern facility.

“I want to thank the members of our community who have shared with us their excitement for The Convent project,” Savannah says. “Your enthusiasm for this development has been vital and we cannot wait for you to visit when we open early next year!”

Emma Jerrot, Good Food Bus Coordinator

Emma, who has been an employee with New Dawn since summer 2019, has played an integral role in the launch of The Good Food Bus project. She has been responsible for everything from packaging the food at Atlantic Superstore and coordinating volunteers to marketing The Good Food Bus.

“I feel very lucky that I get to play a part in addressing some food security issues on our island while working collaboratively with so many organizations,” says Emma. “The response has been wonderful. We’ve had more than 700 customers since we started just over two months ago, which has exceeded our expectations for the pilot.”

The Good Food Bus is a retrofitted accessible bus that transports fruits and vegetables to pre-selected communities on a weekly basis. The bus aims to ease barriers to accessing good food, by bringing an affordable fresh food market on wheels to the Cape Breton communities that need it most. More than 90% of users say they’re eating more fruits and vegetables since the program got underway.

The project is led by a committee with representatives from New Dawn, Ecology Action Centre, United Way Cape Breton, Nova Scotia Health Authority, CBRM Recreation, CBRM Transit, CBRM Council, The Island Food Network, and A Better Bite Community Kitchen.

“When I attended the Vital Awards as a class outing during my Public Relations diploma at NSCC, I said to myself ‘this is my goal, I want to be up on that stage one day’. However, as the years passed, I was not sure if I was ever going to achieve my goal,” says Emma. “Now, I am finally doing something that I love and thoroughly enjoy, and that is when all the pieces came together. I am so humbled to have received the Vital Employee Award and would like to thank everyone who has helped me along the way, especially my parents and boyfriend who are my number one volunteers.”