NAEC grad Misty Meeks has been chosen for Marketing Magazine’s prestigious 30 under Thirty list for 2013. Every year the national magazine names “the 30 smartest young thinkers in marketing today”

When Meeks graduated from North Addington Education Centre in 2000, there was little in the way of digital capacity in the region. Cell service and High Speed Internet were not even on the radar for the area, and the concept of online marketing was in the far distant future.

Not so at Centennial College, where Meeks went to study Creative Advertising after leaving NAEC. After graduating from Centennial she went on to an internship as a copywriter at Hamilton-based Wishart, an ad agency that focuses on the public sector. She began moving away from traditional writing and eventually became Wishart’s webmaster.

She left Wishart to take a job with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) where she helped build up the social networking practice for the society and mentored colleagues from 10 countries around the world.

Working with WSPA enabled Misty Meeks to work towards social and behavioural change.

In 2010, she took a job with Argyle Communications in Toronto, at a time when the agency was “building out its digital practice". Meeks was chosen to lead and grow the digital media team at Argyle.

One of her most successful campaigns thus far at Argyle was a campaign to promote the Crosstown, a transit line across the Eglinton corridor in Toronto. Using an online public meeting approach to achieve 19,000 plus views on Youtube, over 1,000 fans on Facebook, and over 89,000 website visits, the Crosstown campaign won national and international awards.

“Misty has thrived at Argyle because she exemplifies the two most critical things about our corporate culture,” said Argyle President Daniel Tisch, “setting high standards and treating people well.”

Misty Meeks has been promoted to the director level at Argyle, at the age of 29 the youngest ever to attain that position.

Back in Addington Highlands, her parents Sharon and Roger are understandably proud of their daughter’s achievements.

Jory Bolton is an NAEC graduate from Flinton who is just finishing up a Bachelor of Arts at Trent University in International Development Studies and Spanish.

Before heading off to teach in Spain next year she will be participating in a trip to Israel and the West Bank in May with a group called Operation Groundswell.

The trip includes visits with two Israeli groups, Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence, as well as work with a group called Naasej in the West Bank, which is devoted to education efforts targeting vulnerable groups of people.

Rabbis for Human Rights is a group made up of 100 rabbis in Israel.

They describe their mandate in this way: "Rabbis for Human Rights serves as a shofar for the distribution of information about human rights in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  We work in partnership with local Israeli organizations, and with international human rights organizations.”

Breaking the Silence was founded by a group of ex-Israeli soldiers who have been active in the West Bank in recent years. They describe their mandate in the following way: “We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life.”

For Jory Bolton the opportunity to put her educational background in International Development to some use and to deepen her understanding of issues in one of the most couples and historically dense regions of the world had a strong appeal.

“I heard about Operation Groundswell four years ago, and now that I’m graduating I have some time available,” said Jory. “I’m considering a Master’s Degree in Refugee Studies so the opportunity to visit Palestine and Israel is ideal.”

Operation Groundswell was set up in 2006 by students who wanted to volunteer in different parts of the world but were disillusioned with what they saw as a volunteer trip industry that they describe as “glorified tour operators, manufacturing an experience rather than facilitating one.”

On their website they say the trips they sponsor in 21 countries are “all about ethical travel. We’ve sparked a movement of globally active and socially conscious backpackers, what we like to call backpacktivists.”

Part of the way Operation Groundswell works is to provide funding to the groups and organisations that they visit. Each of the 10 or 12 participants in the trips must not only pay their own travel costs, they need to raise $1,000 to donate to local programs.

Jory Bolton, home for Reading Week this week, has been fundraising locally to cover the $1,000 donation requirement. She is putting out flyers at all businesses and is also reaching out to the public for support. And she is planning to share what she learns afterwards.

“I will be coming back after the trip to make a presentation at one of the local halls about what I experience on the trip,” she said.

To make a donation go to fundraising.operationgroundswell.com/jory.

It is not often that local students are presented with an opportunity to work alongside an astronaut - and even less often with an astronaut who happens to be on a special mission orbiting the earth in the International Space Station. But that is the case for grade nine science students at the North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne, who along with students from 250 other schools across the country, will be working alongside the Canadian Space Agency astronaut in a special study to document data comparing radiation levels on earth and in outer space.

Melissa Randle, who heads up the Department of Pure and Applied Sciences at NAEC and teaches science there, will be working with grade nine science students at the school. They will be measuring and recording data collected from a specialized bubble detector, known as a Personal Neutron Dosimeter. The device, which has been supplied to the school by Bubble Technology Industries, is a small hand-held instrument that measures radiation levels in the environment. Astronaut Hatfield will be conducting similar experiments in space and both he and students from across the country will be collecting the data from February 11-18 and again from March 6-13.

The bubble collector the students will be using at the school was developed with Canadian technology at Chalk River. During the data collection dates the detector will be left outside the school for 24-hour intervals. Tiny bubbles that form in the gel inside the glass detector indicate the particular dose of neutron radiation that is being received.

Randle explained what she and students can expect to find from the data that they collect. “We should expect to see a significantly lower level of radiation here on earth as compared to levels in space, since radiation levels are one of the biggest hurdles that astronauts in space are faced with.”

NAEC students are the only students from the Limestone District School Board who will be participating in the project, which Randle sees as a great way to bring science alive for students at the school. “Astronomy can be a hard subject for students to engage with since it is so huge and so 'out of this world'. So this project is a great way for them not only to engage but also to get a better understanding of Canada's contribution to what is happening currently in space right now.”

The student action project was made available to students from across the country through a company called CurioCity, a branch of Let's Talk Science. Students at the school will also be watching videos of Hadfield and will be keeping in touch with him throughout his space journey through Twitter. For more information visit http://www.explorecuriocity.org/Community/ActionProjects/RADIN2.aspx