At just 17 years of age, Edlynne (Eddy) Paez of Niverville isn’t your typical teenager. This was recently recognized by the Loran Scholars Foundation when Paez, a local Grade 12 student, was honoured with the prestigious Loran Award.

This Canadian-based organization focuses on searching out the country’s most promising young people. They look beyond grades to what lies within: strength of character, a deep commitment to service, and exceptional leadership potential.

In March, Paez was one of 35 other students chosen for the Loran Award. They were selected from a total of 6,060 applicants.

After graduation this June, Paez will attend university in Toronto. Thanks to the Loran Award, she’ll receive subsidized tuition and cost of living stipends to the tune of around $120,000 over the period of four years. She says she wouldn’t have been able to manage the cost of her studies on her own.

Paez is already enrolled at the University of Toronto in international development studies.

According to the Loran Scholars Foundation website, one of the qualities they hope to find in young candidates is the ability to “shun the status quo in favour of unconventional paths.”

Paez says she’s never been a follower of convention.

“I’ve had to navigate spaces where, historically, I could have felt unwelcome,” Paez says. “I’m a person of colour in a very majority white town. But more than that, I also find myself navigating educational bureaucracy… which has historically been male-dominated.”

She adds that the underlying theme of everything she does is about building capacity—and not just in her community, her province, or even her country. She tries to think from a global perspective.

“I think that every single issue that we tackle is interconnected as a web,” Paez says. “There’s no such thing as a single subject. Even if you look at chemistry, biology, or environmental science, they all connect to geo-policy, to healthcare, to physics, to every single other aspect of the world.”

Self-motivated as she is, Paez decided to apply for the Loran Award on her own. It began with four pages of writing, telling the board all about herself and her achievements, both in and out of school.

Those achievements are quite remarkable for a young woman of her age.

Throughout high school, Paez participated in drama, choir, sports, and took on student leadership roles.

“I created Niverville High School’s first ever Asian Heritage celebration and brought in about 100 guests. I had programming for Grades 9 to 12.”

Beyond the school walls, Paez has served as a volunteer with Youth Parliament Manitoba. She has also participated in provincial and divisional student advisory councils.

This past February, Paez was invited to attend the youth nuclear peace summit in Ottawa.

The months prior to being selected for the Loran Award have been hectic, Paez says. After the first round, the committee narrowed the applicants down to 500. This group was required to submit video recordings of themselves answering a host of long-answer questions. From there, they were subjected to online interviews.

In the end, the remaining 90 finalists, including Paez, were flown to Toronto to undergo several days of intense personal interviews, the last of which took place in front of a very intimidating panel.

Paez can only speculate on the reasons she made the final cut. One reason, she suspects, is her confidence.

Looking back over her four years of high school, Paez already gets sentimental when she thinks about teacher Tony Clark and the impact he has made on her education.

“He’s just been a great mentor for me, from instilling in me a sense of what project-based learning can be to what it means to be a global citizen… and just taking care of me and allowing me to do all these crazy things.”