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S c h o l a r s h i p F u n d |
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Gretchen Ferguson, a member of the FOG Board of Directors, initiated the FOG Scholarship Fund after spending five months living in Barrio El Recreo in Managua, Nicaragua.
"I noticed that many poor families in the neighbourhood worked very hard to ensure their children got an education. This is very challenging for many reasons.
First, Nicaraguans have to pay for their schooling, even to go to public school. Although the cost seems minimal to us, it is more than many Nicaraguan families can easily afford.
Second, many families need their children to contribute to the family income by working part of the day. This detracts from their ability to study adequately, and sometimes even means that they stop attending school altogether.
Third, the parents in most of the families do not have much schooling themselves. Many come from rural areas, where they stopped school to work on the farm. So even though these parents might want their children to get an education, they find themselves unable to guide them through the system or help them with their homework.
When someone manages to overcome all these challenges and get a high school education, it is a tremendous achievement, something to be very proud of. I noticed, however, that a high school education alone does not provide opportunities for work. Many of these people end up doing the same thing as their parents - eking out a living by selling products in the streets, doing some ironing, taking care of wealthy people's children, selling scrap metal from the garbage.
It seemed to me that people who had worked so hard to get ahead deserved a boost to the next level - to get training in a profession or technical field so that they could truly break out of the cycle of poverty."
This led to the creation of the FOG Scholarship Fund. We support individuals who have proven their commitment to bettering themselves and their communities, and provide them with a partial or full scholarship to attend university or a technical school.
The scholarship recipients are recommended to us by trusted leaders in the communities we are connected to - Santa Rosa del Peñón in northern Nicaragua, and Barrio El Recreo in Managua.
In the year 2002 we supported 9 people with scholarships (unfortunately down from 2001), 5 in Managua and 4 from Santa Rosa. These people would not have been able to enter university without our support, yet the cost was minimal from a Canadian perspective.
We were able to pay the tuition and living costs for two young men from Santa Rosa to study engineering for one year for just $2200 Canadian! And the scholarships in Managua cost as little as $50US per month.
It is incredible how a small amount of money can make such a big difference in people's lives.
In 2003, we're hoping to support additional students from Barrio El Recreo and maybe even Posoltega, expanding the program to encompass three communities.
Click here to read letters from some of our scholarship recipients.
Click here for information on how you can make donations towards the scholarship fund.
Fair Opportunities Group
This page last modified on 01 Aug, 2002
Inquiries about this page should be directed to the
FOG members
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