Madeline Melnick, Young Social Entrepreneur Award Winner at Westport Sunrise Rotary

Madeline Melnick, Staples honors student, social entrepreneur and fund raiser extraordinaire, was honored as Westport Sunrise Rotary's Young Social Entrepreneur of the Month on Friday at the club's weekly breakfast meeting at BobbyQ's.

Maddie thanked the club for “such a big honor.” Big, perhaps. Well deserved, certainly.

She is a senior, a first honors student every semester and an AP Scholar With Distinction for her performance on five AP exams last year.

She also won the Colgate Book Award for her academic accomplishments and her engagement in global social action last year.

As a social entrepreneur, Ms. Melnick co-founded and is a co-president of the Global Friendship Club, an electronic pen pal organization. The club connects Staples students with teens in other countries through epals.com. By trading e-mails in countries including the United Arab Emirates, China, Turkey, and France and Germany they learn about each others' lives: one 17 year old girl in the UAE whether she is married.

The club also raised over $2,000 for Save The Children – one of Staples' largest fundraising programs last year.

Melnick interned last summer with the Foundation for Social Change in New York. There she connected the Friendship club with a program in Barranquilla, Colombia and led a drive that funded the purchase of over 400 books for a school strengthening girls' education and teaching them life skills.

She was selected by the ADL to participate in the Kool to be Kind Anti-Bullying program as a Student Ambassador, teaching third graders about the signs and effects of bullying. What Maddie learned she turned into junior research paper on the “pro-kindness approach to combating bullying.”

In her “spare time,” she coaches gymnastics at the Y and tutors two ninth grade boys in biology and math.

And she has an early decision application in to a college we'd all be proud to attend – no name so we don't jinx her.