Congratulations go to Mai Kaying Yang for being this year’s Rose Rees Peace Award winner. The Rose Rees Peace Awards commemorate Rose Rees, who died in 1935 while serving as president of National Council of Jewish Women‘s (NCJW) Minneapolis Section. Rose Rees was passionate about international relations and world peace. NCJW annually awards graduating seniors from 18 area high schools who have demonstrated a commitment to these same principals of international relations and world peace with the Rose Rees Peace Award.  Mai received this award on April 24th at Temple Israel.
 
Mai was nominated by Edison’s ESL teacher, Ina Ziegler, for her work to create an anti-poverty documentary last year in Ziegler’s ESL 4 class, which was screened at a community event at the Eastside Food Co-op. “Mai went above and beyond to help other students learn how to use the technology to create mini documentaries that advocated for an end to poverty in our community, and she consistently demonstrated a passion for social justice and commitment to helping others” said Ziegler. Mai is a member of our business leadership Voyager program and her advisor Shirley Poelstra commented that “Mai always looks for ways to make herself available to help and assist others.” 
 
The following is an excerpt from Mai’s essay: In this world, everyone wants peace. That is related to a better life and it has a huge impact in everyone’s lives. What I can do to help is to encourage people to keep going without giving up, because while seeing so many people that are giving up is like there are no chance to have world peace. Everyone should know that in America we all need freedom, but at the same time freedom isn’t that easy. Freedom is what we work for in order to be successful. World peace is also in the community because I wake up every day to be a leader. I want everyone to achieve great things in the future because we all face the struggle outside of us and we should be helping to solve problems. 
 
Read her complete essay