Distinguished Young Womens

The Malad Distinguished Young Woman program will not happen this year due to a lack of participants in the program.
DYW is a program that allows high school juniors to compete for college scholarship money. The program’s motto is, “Be healthy, be physically fit and drug free; be involved, serve your community; be studious, stay in school; be ambitious, set and achieve goals; be responsible, live by moral and ethical principles.”
“I loved doing DYW,” said Moriah Ihler, last year’s first alternate. “It mainly helped me with my interviewing skills and helped me get a resume together. Because I am a people person, DYW helped me bring that out in my interviews.”
Only three girls signed up for the program this year — Heidi Hannah, Stephani Treasure and Nicole Hubbard. The girls attempted to recruit more participants for the program but were unsuccessful.
“We just didn’t have enough local interest,” said Jamie Hess, a committee member. “We had three girls sign up and we have to have a minimum of five.”
If the girls still wanted to compete to earn scholarship money, they could have registered online for the Idaho At-Large program. This is a competition for girls in Idaho that don’t have the opportunity to compete in the DYW. The winners from the Idaho At-Large will receive scholarship money and then go on to state with the other girls in DYW.
“A girl from American Falls Idaho went to state as an ‘at-large,’ she was the winner in three categories and one of the top-10 finalists,” said Sandra Thomas, the Malad DYW Chairperson. “She was the only one if not one of the few from her year... just think, if she had decided not to do the ‘at-large,’ she would have missed out on winning scholarship money and also the experiences.”
Because there will not be a DYW program in Malad this year, the committee has decided to have a program to honor past, present and future DYW participants. Carlie Stewart, last year’s winner, will be the MC.
“It will be a fund raiser, we will run it kind of like a program,” Thomas said. “We will have a ‘minnie miss’ routine with girls of Malad Middle School to help inspire younger girls to participate when their year comes.”
Committee members have asked people throughout town to show their talents in this program. There will be dance, guitar, piano and other talents performed that night.
“We’re having people perform talents that have previous DYW experience or people that have been taught by DYW participants,” Hess said. “We are hoping the performers will give a positive reflection upon the DYW.”
The winners of last year’s DYW will present their “forget-me-nots” at the program and Stewart will depart as last year’s winner. The program is scheduled for April 28. 
“We’re hoping people will listen and understand that it is not a beauty pageant and that girls have a lot to learn from this.” Thomas said.