Edmonton Community Foundation has a long history of providing scholarships to help students achieve their educational dreams. The Community Scholarships were launched in 2009 to help students with the costs of post-secondary education and to help address emerging community priorities identified by the Foundation. Scholarships are awarded to students who demonstrate a history of community involvement (e.g. volunteerism) or leadership. Successful applicants have to be pursuing a program of study that will enrich their work in the not-for-profit sector, as a paid employee or as a volunteer. They must also show a commitment to applying the knowledge learned to an ongoing career in the greater Edmonton area, Northern Alberta and/or the Didsbury area.
Draga's research plans are inspired by the lack of reliable data currently available on marginalized populations. Working in the non-profit sector for almost 2 years, she has had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of organizations that work with marginalized peoples. For her thesis project, Draga plans to conduct an in-depth exploration of how non-profit organizations collect, handle, and store data on marginalized clients, and what challenges they face with analyzing and distributing their data. She is currently in the process of incorporating her own non-profit organization that will help other non-profits with their data analytics and management needs.