Cooper Grad’s Daughter Up for ‘Baby of the Year’
Ella Schoen is a bubbly, energetic, 1-and-a-half-year-old girl. Her parents, Jon and Meagan, couldn’t be more proud.
“She’s got a personality that the world should have,” said Jon Schoen, Ella’s father, an alum of Robbinsdale Cooper High School.
“We hear all the time how cute she is, and how sweet she is,” said Meagan Schoen, Ella’s mother.
It’s the sort of thing you might expect to hear from every parent talking about their first child, but there’s a big reason why they’re so high on Ella. She is in a nationwide contest to become “Baby of the Year.”
“It came up on my Instagram as like, a sponsored ad,” said Meagan. “And I, of course, when it says, ‘do you have America’s cutest baby,’ I’m like, ‘yes we do!'”
Baby of the Year is a voting competition put on by the nonprofit, Baby2Baby, which provides basic essentials for underprivileged children. Anyone with Ella’s link can vote once a day for free (people can donate to Baby2Baby for additional votes).
“You can donate for votes as well, and my family in Canada has been donating a lot,” said Meagan. “My mom, Carolyn, she’s not here every day, so that’s her way of being involved.”
A screenshot of Ella’s page from the Baby of the Year website.
The competition began in mid-September and Ella has made it through multiple rounds of voting. She’s currently at No. 1 in her group.
The winner of the Baby of the Year competition receives $25,000 and will star in an ad campaign in Good Housekeeping magazine.
“People always say she should get into baby acting or modeling, and we kind of thought about it,” Meagan said. “This is our introduction into seeing how that would go.”
The competition goes on for another month, so whether Ella has what it takes to become Baby of the Year remains to be seen. In the meantime, Jon and Meagan are asking for your vote.
“Well, I think they should vote for Ella just because she’s that cool, personally,” said Jon.
As for what the family will do if they win the $25,000 prize, they say they’ll put some toward Ella’s college fund. The rest would be used to help make Ella and Meagan United States citizens. Both were born in Canada.
Meagan and Jon Schoen with their daughter, Ella, when she was much younger.
