Scholarship Programs

The Students | Junior High and High School Scholarships | Eligibility | Responsibilities | Benefits (on side bar) | Other Services to Young Scholars | Career Day | Laptops | Outing | College Scholarships | How You Can Help

The Students

Imagine living in a three-room adobe house in a rural village with cobblestone streets, erratic electricity and undrinkable water. Your father is a campesino who gets seasonal work picking coffee beans, cutting sugar cane, and planting corn. Your mother stays home and cares for your five brothers and sisters. Your grandmother and a disabled uncle live with you. In the afternoons and on weekends you work in the fields and around the house. But you are a good student and enjoy school; you are proud to always get the best grade in the class in math. At the sixth grade graduation ceremony you are given a prize for academic achievement. What is your future?

Without a scholarship from Project Amigo, schooling for this child would probably end at 6th grade, and he or she would begin working in a menial job and look forward to a life of grinding poverty. With your donations, Project Amigo is opening up a new future for children such as these - one in which they can work with their minds, not their backs.

For more information about the lives of our scholarship students, see our Biographies of Young Scholars.

A typical family which cannot afford to send their children to school beyond the sixth grade without scholarships from Project Amigo.

Scholarship recipients can continue their studies through junior high school, high school and even college thanks to Project Amigo.

Mireya Rincon, second-year law student at the University of Colima, thanks Project Amigo and her sponsoring Rotary Club (Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco) for helping her achieve a dream she had never believed would be possible for her.  She has been with Project Amigo since she was in second grade.

Donate to Project Amigo's Scholarship Fund by using your credit card on-line:

I would like to get the highest level of education possible, in order to have a job that enables me and my family to progress honorably.

Juana Díaz Peña
Project Amigo Scholarship Recipient

Junior High and High School Scholarships

Eligibility

Project Amigo scholarships are available to poor children graduating from rural primary schools in the state of Colima, Mexico, with a grade point average of 8.5 out of 10.

Responsibilities

To continue in the program students must:
maintain at least a grade point average of 8.5 out of 10,
perform community service, attend Homework Club every week, and behave respectfully toward their teachers, other students, and their school.

Other Services to Young Scholars

Students who maintain a grade point average of 9.0 or above also receive a fun outing -- movies, beach, miniature golf, etc. -- at mid-year and after the end of the school year.

In addition to scholarships to junior high and high school, Project Amigo operates weekly Homework Clubs, providing tutoring and mentoring for the students in six different locations throughout the state of Colima.

Young women students who live in remote rural villages without access to high school or college, are housed in Project Amigo's girl's boarding home, Casa Amiga, in the city of Colima.

Project Amigo Director of Community Relations Anilu Mendoza explains the scholarship program to a group of seventh grade girls at the Suchitlán junior high school.

Sandra Guadalupe Mariano Ramos is congratulated by Ixtlahuacán town officials upon winning a bicycle for academic excellence. Her tutor, Ixtlahuacán Homework Club director Tom Brown (center rear) looks on proudly. January, 2001

Benefits

Before school starts each fall students receive
school uniforms and school shoes;
gym clothes and tennis shoes;
school supplies; and
school registration fees.

During the school year the students receive
more school supplies as needed
costs of transportation to and from school
one hot meal a day, and
weekly tutoring and mentoring sessions.

Career Day

Students from rural villages in Mexico have little opportunity to obtain an education beyond sixth grade. Thanks to Project Amigo's supporters, rural scholars in the state of Colima not only have the opportunity to continue their studies, but they also have the opportunity to explore the wide world of careers available to them that they don't see in their villages. Project Amigo's Career Day opened their eyes to possibilities they could not even have imagined.

Rotarians from the Rotary Clubs of Colima, Coquimatlan and Villa de Alvarez gave the scholars an in-depth view of their careers, and the education needed to attain them. Representatives from three of Colima's universities helped the students understand the entry requirements, and how to select a high school based on the career paths they might choose. (In Mexico, a student's choice of high school determines his or her future career studies at the university level.) Presenters discussed careers in journalism, engineering, environmental sciences, health and social sciences, and business administration.

Colima Rotary Club President Checo, and member and journalist Guero Wilson, look on as Villa de Alvarez Rotary Club member Alberto Hernandez receives a Recognition Award for his participation in Career Day from scholarship recipient Rocio Beltran. Hernandez is a Small Business Administrator who shared his profession at Project Amigo's Career Day.

Scholarship recipient Teresa Alejandra Guerrero thanks the presenters for so generously sharing their Saturday with the students.

Scholarship recipients listen, and have the opportunity to ask questions about career choices, college entry requirements, and testing opportunities to discover interests and aptitudes.

Laptops

The Rotary Club of Long Beach, District 5320, the Colima Rotary and The Rotary Foundation partnered to provide 20 laptop computers to Project Amigo’s University scholarship recipients.  The matching grant included funds to provide wireless Internet access at Casa Amiga for all laptop computer users.

Colima Rotary President Gerso Solorzano hands Project Amigo Scholarship recipient Marcos Vinicio Perez Reyes his new laptop computer.

Five of Project Amigo’s university scholars received their laptops at the official presentation at the Colima Rotary Club.  The remaining 15 scholars have received theirs.

Colima Rotarian Jose Aguirre presents Magdaleno Martinez Castro with his laptop.

Each scholar received a new laptop, 1Gb memory stick, wireless mouse, Office 2003, Norton Anti-virus, and a laptop carrying case.

Outing

Project Amigo’s University scholarship recipients enjoyed a summer-time vacation to their national capital, Mexico City.  For most of them it was their first visit.  For those few who had been to Mexico City before, it was the first time to spend time there.  

During their five-day stay they enjoyed a “Turi-Bus” tour of the sites which gave them the opportunity to disembark and re-board at points of interest along the way; they climbed the pyramids at Teotihuacan; explored the Hill of Tepayac where the Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared in a vision to peasant Juan Diego, and the Basilica of the Virgin.  The National Palace gave them an artist’s view (Diego Rivera’s) of Mexican history as a docent interpreted Rivera’s view of historical events.

Scholars at the Hill of Tepayac, where the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the peasant Juan Diego in 1523.

The Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Scholars atop the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan.

Students in the Turi-Bus of Mexico City.

Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.

College Scholarships

Scholarship students who successfully complete High School are eligible for a Project Amigo College Scholarship to the University of Colima. Some of our young scholars are outstanding students with real potential to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and community leaders. When these children enter a profession they, and their whole family, will break the cycle of poverty that has imprisoned them for generations. You can make this happen with your donations to our College Scholarship Fund.

How You Can Help

If you or your Rotary Club sponsor a scholarship student you will receive a biography and photos of your student and periodic reports of his or her progress. In addition, we will translate your letters and the student's replies. Scholarship donors can establish rewarding and lasting relationships with their students, sharing with them the adventure of their journey into adulthood.

The cost of giving these young scholars a future is $420 for a junior high student, $600 per high school student, and $4,000 for a college student per year.

Click here for information on specific needy scholars.

If you would like to sponsor a student, please fill out the on-line sponsorship form. Donations in any amount to our Scholarship Fund are always appreciated.

Grisela Ortiz Bonifacio would not be able to attend junior high school without a scholarship from Project Amigo. She lives in the Quesería migrant labor camp and wants to be a doctor when she grows up.

Project Amigo Work Week Volunteer Ed Marshall of the Rotary Club of Mill Valley, California, tutors a scholarship recipient during a weekly Homework Club session.

Statistics

For the
2007-08 school year:

102 scholarship recipients attending schools around the state of Colima, including:

46 in high school
37 in junior high
19 in college

31 males
71 females

The Students | Junior High and High School Scholarships | Eligibility | Responsibilities | Benefits (on side bar) | Other Services to Young Scholars | Career Day | Laptops | Outing | College Scholarships | How You Can Help

This page last updated February, 2008.