Call for Awards Nominations 2023

The KTA Awards Committee seeks nominations for four awards that recognize outstanding individuals and clubs.  The awards will be presented at the Fall meeting on October 21. 

Award Categories Include:

The KTA Citation Award for Lifetime Achievement is presented to a person who has, over a period of years (not necessarily their entire lifetime), made significant contributions to the preservation of hiking trails and promoting hiking in Pennsylvania.  Service may be in the form of volunteer efforts, publications, fieldwork, or any other pursuit that has furthered the mission of the KTA.   This is KTA’s highest honor.

The Thyra Sperry Volunteer of the Year Award goes to a KTA member whose recent service to KTA's mission, especially in the preceding year, is most worthy of recognition. It is named in honor of former KTA president Thyra Sperry (d. 2017) and her devoted service to KTA. 

Certificates of Achievement are awarded to individuals for extraordinary work on projects that benefit hikers and/or trails in Pennsylvania.  Nominations are made by KTA member organizations and allow clubs to nominate a volunteer who may not be an individual KTA member. The nomination should be based on recent service, especially in the past year, which serves the hiking public as a whole rather than primarily the members of the member club. 

The KTA Club of the Year Award honors a club for excelling in one or more of the following areas during the previous 12-18 months.   

• Hiking Promotion: How does your club promote hiking and foot trail use, through old and new media? In what ways is your club spreading the joys of hiking?
• Trail Work: What is your club doing to build, maintain, and promote hiking trails?
• Inclusion: What efforts does your club make to include people of different age groups, foot trail user groups, backgrounds, abilities, racial groups and ethnicities?
• Philanthropy: What charitable efforts does your club make within its community? What accomplishments has your club made to benefit the broader community?

The club application for this award should include:

• A statement that tells us what makes your club so awesome and why you should be the Club of the Year.
• A maximum of 2 documents that support your application. This could include anything from an informational one-sheet to a video.

Just because your club is new or small, it doesn’t mean that it can’t leave a big footprint! Club of the Year submissions are judged on club achievements relative to the club’s size and age. A member club cannot win the award two years in a row. Please only enter one submission per member club!

For the three individual awards, the nomination should include the name of the nominee, the approximate length of the person’s service to KTA's mission, and a brief description of the individual’s contributions.

Send all nominations to Barbara Wiemann, Awards Committee chair, at [email protected] by September 15, 2023.

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