SOLANA BEACH – The picture on the flier is at least 20 years old and fuzzy from being photocopied over and over. Six smiling kids peer out from it. The caption beneath reads "Children's Challenge Awards."
A small application follows.
The flier may look commonplace, but the children who are recommended for the awards are anything but. They're first-through sixth-graders who exemplify courage, community service, fellowship or skill in the arts, humanities or sciences.
At the outset, the Optimist Club of Del Mar-Solana Beach intended to honor only six children each year.
But the judges rarely adhere to the limit.
This year, for example, the club awarded $200 U.S. savings bonds to 10 students.
"We could not, in all honesty, say, 'This kid was deserving of a bond and this one was not,' " said Victor Kops, a co-chairman of the contest every spring since 1982.
The extra prizes typically go to students nominated for courage, specifically for battling a debilitating disease.
Ryan Douglas, 8, was one such honoree this year. Ryan exemplifies courage every day, his second-grade teacher, Gwen Danielson, wrote in her nominating essay.
"Just waking up in the morning is courageous for him, because he knows that almost every morning he will be running a fever between 102 and 105," she wrote.
Ryan has lived with juvenile arthritis for seven years. He is often in too much pain to walk, so many days he uses a scooter to travel around Solana Highlands Elementary.
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Children's Challenge Award recipients
Name, age, school, category:
Norma Aviles, 12, Skyline School, courage
Jenny Barwick, 8, Ashley Falls School, courage
Arnold Chang, 11, Solana Highlands School, arts
Ryan Douglas, 8, Solana Highlands School, courage
Mally Haney, 12, Carmel Creek School, fellowship
Jorge Meneses-Flores, 11, Carmel Del Mar School, fellowship
Caitlin Ryan, 12, Carmel Del Mar School, science
Nicholas Scutti, 10, Skyline School, community service
Lucas Thornton, 9, Sage Canyon School, humanities
Becca Tracer, 12, Carmel Del Mar School, courage
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He undergoes long, painful treatments once or twice a month.
But he arrives on campus every day with a big smile, Danielson wrote.
Ryan transferred from a small, private school to the public school in September.
"It was a hard decision. The campus is so much bigger," said Ryan's mother, Jenny Douglas. "But Gwen did a lot for him that other teachers didn't."
Helping another person earned one student, Nicholas Scutti, 10, his award in community service.
Nicholas' best friend has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive tract.
To help him, Nicholas convinced the other students in his Skyline Elementary classroom to give up their recess break for one week. Instead of playing outside, his classmates collected pledges for the number of books they read.
Nicholas added to the pot by manning a "Stump the Kid" booth at an annual fund-raiser for cystic fibrosis research in June. He collected $1 for every question he answered correctly about U.S. presidential history. With Nicholas' contribution, the children raised about $3,000.
When the Challenge Awards began, Kops and former member Ed Burt's goal was to acknowledge children who "typically go unheralded by all of us," Kops said.
The founders borrowed the idea – as well as the flier – from an Optimists chapter in Colorado.
"The whole purpose of the program is that junior high and high school kids usually have numerous awards, but nobody is really recognizing the younger people," Kops said.
"We're trying to change that."
