Bellevue College student and Bellevue resident Zafar Haq has won the national Two-Year College Student Achievement Award for 2010 from the Cooperative Education and Internship Association (CEIA).

The award recognizes the most outstanding student participation in a two-year college cooperative education or internship program in the prior year.

CEIA is honoring Haq for his service as a Bellevue College Rotaract Nepal/USA Disability Awareness Campaign intern in 2009. The organization will give him the award and a $500 stipend at its national conference in Boston next month.

During his internship, Haq and five other interns traveled to Nepal for 10 days to learn about the physical, social and financial challenges faced by local residents with disabilities.

The group returned to implement a series of service projects and events to raise disability awareness, including a campus-wide event called the Ability Experience, which gave the BC community opportunities to experience what it means to live with a disability.

Haq also initiated a fund-raising campaign to buy wheelchairs for one of the agencies his delegation visited in Nepal. His efforts have brought in one wheelchair donation so far.

Haq additionally serves as national director for a mentoring program for young Muslim men, and he works as an assistant organizer for Meetup.com, coordinating Habitat for Humanity and Adopt-a-Highway projects.

He has also worked as a volunteer at Evergreen Hospital and the Seattle University Center for Service.

Haq holds an associate’s degree in arts and sciences from BC, and will receive a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Washington in June. He is continuing to study at Bellevue College to prepare for medical school, with the goal of improving access to medical care in underserved areas of the world.