Featured Member: Shambhavi Shankar
Our new featured member is Shambhavi Shankar. She is a recent graduate of The Woodlands School and is currently in her first year of the Schulich School of Business, pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration.
As a person, Shambhavi is easy-going, a quick learner, a hard worker, loyal, and most importantly a loving friend. She loves hanging out with friends and trying and learning new things, and has been playing the violin since she was 11 years old. She enjoys music, theatre, reading, and watching movies and one of her greatest passions is trying to save the environment. When asked how she does it, Shambhavi says she "lives for new experiences and tries to make the most out of everything."
Throughout her high school life, she has been highly involved with school clubs and organizations, which include the philosophy club, soccer team, badminton team, and the announcement team. As well, she was chosen to be one of two student trustees for The Peel District School Board this past year, and represented all of the schools in South Peel.
Although Shambhavi is widely involved within school clubs and organizations, her involvement in her school's environmental club perhaps contains her greatest accomplishments. During her four years of involvement with the The Woodlands Environmental Club, Shambhavi was able to start a dead battery and e-waste collection initiative within which students and teachers brought in dead batteries and old electronics, which were then disposed of in an environmentally safe manner.
She also helped organize Earth Week activities, including a trivia competition to raise aware about basic environmental issues including recycling. Her school club is also involved in annual tree-plantings where trees are purchased from funds raised by students. Called "toonies for trees," the initiative taught students how to plant trees, and led to more than 50 new trees being planted at The Woodlands. She also helped with the seasonal clean-ups of nearby parks and is in charge of the weekly recycling at her school.
Inspired by the work of PEYA members, Shambhavi joined the organization as a general member in 2005. She felt that PEYA's activities were
a perfect extension of the environmental work she was doing with her school club, and was very motivated by "all of the fantastic people."
She then joined the executive leadership council for two years, and was responsible for the
Outreach group. Through PEYA, Shambhavi was able to attend many youth conferences around 
Mississauga with other PEYA members and teach others about environmental issues by presenting workshops with fellow PEYA members.
Outside of school and PEYA, Shambhavi has been a district referee for the Ontario Soccer Association, as well as a lighting/sound technician for Amateur Millennium Artists - a local amateur theatre group. She also volunteers with Kannada Sangha Toronto, a cultural group for South Indians, where she helps set up and tear-down for their bi-monthly shows and events, and has has helped host the shows.
Shambhavi is a recipient of the Millennium Excellence Award, the Loran Provincial Scholarship, and the Ontario Principal's Council Award. When asked how her friends would describe her, she answered "like a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans." Read more in a Mississauga News article about Shambhavi!
