Charles McEwen

Charlie McEwen is a successful student-athlete who founded several community initiatives in Nova Scotia that support new immigrants to Canada. Hfx Youth Futbol is an after-school soccer program for primary school students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to play organized soccer. From this, he co-founded a shoe recycling program, Cleatcycle, that collects secondhand sports footwear and redistributes it to those in need. To date, Cleatcycle has given away over 2000 pairs of cleats and sneakers to new immigrants to Canada. This project is expanding across Eastern Canada and has proven to be a positive environmental initiative, saving significant volumes of footwear from going prematurely to landfills. He has had a further impact by starting an offshoot of this, Coatcycle, which involves collecting used winter clothing to distribute to new arrivals to Canada.

Charlie is now pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston.