{"id":222493,"date":"2016-03-08T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T20:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=222493"},"modified":"2016-03-08T06:00:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T20:00:53","slug":"million-dollar-cholar-looking-for-sponsors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/million-dollar-cholar-looking-for-sponsors\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Million Dollar $cholar\u2019 looking for sponsors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gerard<\/a>
Gerard van Gils<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kagman High School\u2019s \u201cMillion Dollar $cholar\u201d program is looking for sponsors that can help raise funds for 20 students to attend college off island.<\/p>\n

Speaking before the business community, KHS teacher Gerard van Gils shared his students\u2019 need with regards to attending college.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge with scholarships is you have to actually arrive at college before you can claim scholarships that are being awarded to you,\u201d van Gils said. <\/p>\n

The club\u2019s goal is to raise $1 million in scholarship funds for their first generation of \u201cMillion Dollar $cholars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to raise funds for flights, clothing, stuff for their dorms, to enable them to make that first step to college,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

According to van Gils, about half of the KHS\u2019 students are living below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Identifying the top 25 of their graduating class and those who wanted to go off-island for higher education, the club to help the group of students to go to college was formed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf our 20 \u2018Million Dollar $cholars,\u2019 19 are below the poverty line,\u201d van Gils said. <\/p>\n

He added that they want to make their students career-and-college ready and this is one way to help them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Million Dollar $cholar program is an opportunity for our students to raise awareness for higher education,\u201d van Gils said.<\/p>\n

During his talk, van Gils presented one of his students, Jessa Camacho.<\/p>\n

Camacho, he said, has been accepted to five different universities so far and has been offered more than $70,000 in scholarships. <\/p>\n

Camacho read to the audience a part of an essay she wrote for her Gates Millenium Scholarship application, on which she shared her personal experience inside their tin house during Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n

\u201cDay one of school, the teacher hands me a school supply list, as though my parents would choose to buy me paper notebooks instead of roofing nails. Kids in concrete houses showed up in new school clothes, I came to school wearing the only clothes that didn’t fly away in the storm. School starts in the dark, with no Internet, and I’m expected to turn in scholarship applications and write essays as though I have the same advantages of kids my age attending prep schools in the United States. My teacher tells me to write something true, show how smart I am, and convince you that I am college-ready. I can do that,\u201d her essay says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething true: I never again want to be inside a house as it is being demolished.<\/p>\n

Something smart: Education and money are twin sisters. The poor will never have an equal starting point as the rich and my intelligence is not in question.<\/p>\n

I am college ready: I’ve lived through the calm, disease, of the eye of a typhoon. Living in a dorm doesn’t scare me,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

Camacho\u2019s essay and 19 other students\u2019 will be part of a book that they will publish as part of the fundraiser. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve written a book, and this is a book of my students\u2019 college essays. It\u2019s called \u2018Reflections of Survival and Scholarship.\u2019 These students have survived a massive typhoon and even more difficult, they\u2019ve survived poverty. We\u2019re going to sell this book in a few weeks,\u201d van Gils said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now we\u2019re looking for corporate sponsors to pay for the printing of the book and also support our students as they go off to college,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Those who would like to support can contact van Gils through KHS and donate to their account at gofundme.com.<\/p>\n

Van Gils said they were able to send one student last year to college. Aside from raising funds for 20 students this year, they are also already working on the juniors to prepare them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kagman High School\u2019s \u201cMillion Dollar $cholar\u201d program is looking for sponsors that can help raise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":222494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[37,968,163,10166],"class_list":["post-222493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-education-2","tag-khs","tag-kids","tag-million-dollar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}