Chester Borden Community Award

Open to full-time students enrolled in any year of study in any program at any campus.

Application assessment will consider

• Financial need
• Community involvement through extra-curricular activities and/or volunteerism
• Good academic standing
• Self-identification: African Nova Scotian or of African Descent (Black, African Canadian or African American)

About the award
The Black Employee Resource Network created the Chester Borden Community Award to honor Chester’s outstanding work in his community.

Chester hails from the community of Whitney Pier. He has been working with the youth in his community for about 40 years, through coaching; as a student support worker through the school board; or for the last 17 years, as the Executive Director of BGC Cape Breton. Chester attended the United Mission youth club as a child where Jonathan Skeete, Nova Scotia’s first African Nova Scotian RCMP officer, was his youth worker. Like Skeete, Chester went on to claim a few firsts for himself. He was the first African Nova Scotia student support worker hired by the Cape Breton Regional School Board in 1999 and he was one of the first African Nova Scotians to volunteer with Children’s Aid as a mentor, foster parent and respite parent.