[Archived from June 5, 2009]
[by Phyllis Shaikun]
The 2009 Stacy Marks Nisenbaum Award will go to Sarah Ensign, which will enable her to attend BBYO conventions in the upcoming year and to help the Jay Levine BBG (B’nai B’rith Girls) chapter.
Although she will be a junior at Ballard High School in September, she’s already been a member of her chapter for close to three years. She also has taken on several leadership positions including serving as chapter secretary (maskira) for two terms, and she is about to begin her second term as president (n’siah).
Ensign ran the program committee at the 2008 regional conference that kicked-off the BBYO (B’nai B’rith Youth Organization) programming year. She also helped train MITS (new Members in Training) at B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Camp Swoneky in Ohio and learned quite a bit at Kallah, a training meeting also held at the camp in March.
On the local front, she is pleased that since the last board election, the Jay Levine BBG chapter has grown from just four members to more than 20. Ensign credited much of that to a great job by Chapter Moreh (educator), Hayley Grossman.
She’s the first one to say that her brother, Daniel, winner of both the Ellen and Milton Cantor Israel Scholarship and this year’s Joseph Fink BBYO Community Service Award has been her mentor and showed her, by example, how to be a good BBYO member.
When she’s not involved in BBYO, Ensign plays field hockey for Ballard, a game she has played competitively since the fourth grade. She played on the freshman Junior Varsity team and will be playing both JV and Varsity in the fall. She also has participated in Beta Club. While it’s a little early for her to choose a career direction, she likes magazines and thinks one day she would like to be an art director.
Ensign thanks her parents, Julie and Jim Ensign, and her grandparents, Elaine and the late Henry Frank and the late Carolyn and Lester Ensign, for encouraging her to develop important leadership skills. She also points out with pride that her grandparents and her mother also were involved in BBYO.
“There’s no better way than BBYO,” she says, “to experience the feeling of sisterhood and coming together to gain leadership skills and provide leadership to others.”
“I am honored to have been chosen to receive the Stacy Marks Nisenbaum Award for 2009. Being in BBYO has provided me with leadership opportunities, given me the chance to express my Judaism with other Jewish teenagers and to form friendships with other BBGs and AZAs from our region. I can’t wait to use what I have learned about this great organization to help improve BBYO in Louisville!”
The Stacy Marks Nisenbaum Award was created after her death by three close friends, Stacy Gordon-Funk, Wendy Snow and Sally Weinberg, who felt that the scholarship program was the best way to honor her.
The Nisenbaum Award will be presented at The Jewish Community of Louisville’s Annual Meeting, Monday, June 29, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center. Other awards will also be presented. The program will be followed by a dessert reception.