Animal Advocates Merit Award of Pennsylvania

HOW THE ANIMAL ADVOCATES MERIT AWARD RELATES TO MY CAREER AND EDUCATIONAL PLANS I have been working part-time at the Brandywine Valley SPCA since fall of 2022, when I started 10th grade. Since graduating from Rustin High School in June 2025 with a 3.4 GPA, I have also taken on a second part-time job with The Cultured Canine as a board-and-train (B&T) dog trainer. Undertaking a liberal arts college program, including a combination of psychology and business courses, will provide the foundation I need to develop both my business skills as well as strengthen my skills in managing difficult clients. I have observed that the customer service skills that I developed in the shelter environment are useful in general, but there are distinct differences between shelter customers who come in to find an adoptable pet vs. dog owners who have dog(s) needing training. The former is more of a transactional interaction, while the latter requires developing a long-term client relationship based on trust, respect, and confidence and having a better understanding of client psychology. I have three primary career goals. First, to elevate my dog training skills as well as business, marketing and psychology skills. Gaining those skills can be accomplished by taking the relevant courses without necessarily pursuing a college degree. I love handling the tough dogs, the ones with behavioral challenges. Every dog teaches me something new, but also, every dog that I can train and remediate unwanted behaviors is a dog that is less likely to be surrendered into the animal welfare system. In short, while I have spent a decade working either as a volunteer or employee in the shelter, I see the opportunity to prevent unnecessary animal surrenders by offering training to prevent those surrenders from needing to happen. Working in the shelter environment is very reactionary-based; working with owners on the cusp of giving up is taking proactive, preventative action. Second, to pursue certification in animal welfare as a Humane Law Officer, with the ability to respond and investigate claims of animal neglect and abuse. Many employers require a college degree for this position. Third, to pursue a career in law enforcement as the human partner in a K9 unit. Typically, K9 law enforcement officer roles are very competitive, and having a college degree is often required. One significant challenge to these goals is the cost of education. Although I was accepted to several colleges, including the local state university (West Chester University - WCU), I am not able to afford the cost of tuition. I had planned to attend as a commuter student, as WCU is just ten minutes away from home, but even then, I would have needed $12,000/year out of pocket. I found another path to earning college credit HOW MY PERSONAL JOURNEY, EDUCATION GOALS AND PASSION FOR ANIMAL WELFARE CONNECT Most people have faced challenges in their life, and I have had my share of challenges in my personal journey. I was born in 2006, to drug-addicted parents who had split up before I was born. I weighed less than four pounds at birth, likely due to neonatal drug exposure. During the next seven years, my mother remained relatively unstable, relying on a combination of friends and family to finance her lifestyle, much of which she was able to hide from prying eyes. When I should have been able to attend kindergarten, my mother enrolled me in cyber school but never actually did anything to ensure any education for me. I was expelled for truancy when I was just five years old. My mom moved out of the school district and never told the new school district I existed and married a man who, like her, was dual-diagnosis – mental health issues and drug/alcohol addiction. Both of them had violent streaks. By the time I was six, I knew which belts hurt less when I “earned” a beating, such as for wetting the bed at night; hiding their tequila bottles; or flushing the toilet after relieving myself and thereby “disturbing” them while they were “chilling”. I had learned that people might smile and say one thing to your face but lie and do something entirely different. I’d also learned that animals never lie. Their body language tells you exactly what they are thinking. Accordingly, I grew up trusting animals, and my ability to read them, far more than I trusted people. The neighbors would sometimes call when they heard my parents fighting or heard me screaming. My stepfather ensured I would lie to the police to prevent them from coming in – a classic excuse he had me recite was “I’m sorry, my parents aren’t home, I had the TV on too loud and bothered the neighbors”. While I wanted to tell the police the truth, my stepdad told me if the police came in, he would kill my mother or one of my dogs – he often was hiding in the next room, with a knife to the throat of either my mom or one of my dogs. One of the few bright spots in my daily life was our pets, including several dogs, cats, and a fishtank. I recognized that they were victims in that sad house, just as much as I was. While some little children have a favorite blanket or stuffed toy to cuddle when they want comforting, I turned to my actual living, breathing animals: Milky Way, Gaga, and Sebastian were favorites. Another bright spot was when a relative would sometimes be given permission to take me for a day, or even a weekend. Of course, I was counseled by my mom and stepdad to not tell anyone about “private family things”. Those brief excursions sometimes included shadowing as a volunteer at the Delaware County SPCA, where the staff quickly learned that I knew how to approach fearful animals and to help socialize them around children my age. The benefit to me was that it gave me a huge self-esteem boost, knowing that I was helping animals so that they could have a chance of adoption. As far as my education, whenever questions were raised by friends or family, they were told that I was being “home-educated” and that the school district had approved the plan. Of course, that wasn’t true at all. My mom and step-dad had no intention of ever letting me become educated. It took a night of massive arguments in May 2013 between my mom and stepdad, with the police coming out multiple times, before my life changed. That was the night that child welfare came out. After assessing the condition of the house and photographing me, with bruises and everything, they determined that I needed to be removed immediately for my safety. At that point, I was 7 ½ years old, operating at the level of a 3-year-old academically. I did not know the difference between letters and numbers and could not read my own name. I was placed in a kinship foster care home in 2013 and formally adjudicated into Pennsylvania foster care as a ward of the state. What followed was nearly three traumatizing years of caseworkers trying to get either parent to be “safe enough” for me to be reunified with them, while I struggled to get caught up academically. I can tell you that the child welfare system, aka the foster care system, needs significant improvement. In 2015, case workers agreed that it would never be safe for me to return to either of my parents and all parental rights were terminated. My foster parent was legally permitted to advocate for me to volunteer at the animal shelter near our home. They did not allow minor children to volunteer at that time, but my foster parent was relentless, providing proof of similar “Junior Volunteer” programs at other shelters. Finally, one of the top administrators agreed to give me a “job interview” to become a shelter volunteer! The stakes were high though, because Julie, the administrator, informed me that the interview would consist of two parts. First, a verbal interview assessing my maturity and general behavior. If I passed that, we would proceed into the dog kennels, where my dog handling skills would be assessed as well. If I passed both parts… she agreed that she would start a limited Junior Volunteer program, with me as the first child – and a guinea pig to start the program. If I failed the interview, the program would not even start. If I passed the interviews, the program would start – but continuing it, as I would be the first, would be based on my success or failure. No pressure! Seriously, while the stakes were high, I’d been through much worse pressure in my original parental home. And my foster parent was rock solid certain about my animal handling skills. I passed the verbal interview. I passed the dog handling tests in the kennels. The Junior Volunteer program was launched. For weeks, I was the ONLY child volunteering at the shelter. The shelter behaviorist even told me that he trusted ME far more with shelter dogs than he trusted some adult volunteers! Then word began to spread, and the program grew. I was a role model for other children in the program. Some of the children (and their parents) quickly found out that the shelter experience isn’t always rosy. It’s not always just cuddly kittens and fluffy puppies… sometimes it is hard work, both mentally and physically. Because I’d already been through so much, I was able to help some of the other child volunteers work through some of the more difficult parts of shelter work. However, it most certainly isn’t for everyone. There is no sugarcoating it; fostering a medically at-risk litter of neonate kittens and seeing them succumb to fading kitten syndrome despite everyone’s best efforts is simply heartbreaking. Not everyone is able to grieve that loss and then pick themselves back up and continue volunteering, but some can. For me, this was a win-win, all the way around. My self-esteem, damaged from my early years of neglect and abuse, improved. I was making a difference by working with animals, especially those that were nervous around children, helping them to become comfortable with “mini adult humans”. I felt a kind of camaraderie with some of the most vulnerable animals that came into the shelter. I knew how to approach them gently yet confidently, and not feed into their fears. The shelter became a second home for me and long-term adult staff became unofficial “family”. A.J. became my “shelter dad”, and Francis became my “shelter granddad”. The more I volunteered, the more tasks I was trusted to handle and my animal handling skillset grew. By 2021, I had over 8,000 documented volunteer hours at the Brandywine Valley SPCA. I was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Presidential Volunteer Service Program, signed by President Biden. In 2022, the Brandywine Valley SPCA hired me as a part-time kennel assistant. The job title does not begin to describe the tasks and responsibilities that I have performed; I’ve met police at accident scenes to retrieve injured animals, behaviorally rehabilitated dogs from fighting rings, medically rehabbed dogs after having a limb amputated, met fosters in the middle of the night for emergency care, and when necessary, performed humane euthanasia with a veterinarian guiding me over the phone in the middle of the night. And I still continue to foster animals at home as a volunteer. Now, it’s 2025 - ten years later. There are over 150 registered Junior Volunteers, supporting the shelter by walking dogs, cleaning kennels, fostering animals at home, taking adoptable animals out for the community to see, providing enrichment and performing so many other tasks. The number of children over the past decade that have volunteered in the program; the number of parents who also volunteered because their children could volunteer; and the number of animals that all those individuals have helped over the past ten years is incalculable and mentally staggering. The Brandywine Valley SPCA typically has over 5,000 animals pass through their doors every year. All because one foster parent believed in me enough to pester an SPCA administrator to give me a chance when I was just 9 years old to volunteer. Now, I am asking for you to give me a chance by selecting me for this scholarship. ANIMAL WELFARE PASSION - WHAT INSPIRED MY DEVOTION TO ANIMALS I can’t pinpoint any single moment that inspired my devotion to animals; rather, my passion and devotion to animal welfare has been shaped throughout my life. From being a neglected and abused child, to discovering that I have the power to help animals, and to make an impact in animal welfare – all of those moments have created and strengthened my passion for animal welfare. MY EDUCATION GOALS AND THE FINANCIAL CHALLENGE In addition to working part-time at the SPCA, I am working on a commission basis for The Cultured Canine as a board-and-train dog trainer. The pay is not enough to cover my basic expenses (car insurance, maintenance, car payments, gas, tolls, etc.) and to also pay for college. Just the tuition alone at the local state-supported university would require $12,000/year, which I do not have. That is why, after having accepted and enrolled at West Chester University, I needed to relinquish my seat. Further, now that I am working two part-time jobs while also training my own dogs, I have realized that the best approach for me would be to take online college courses that are offered asynchronously, giving me the flexibility to complete courses on my own schedule and pace while also juggling two part-time jobs. As you may have already surmised, I am not one to sit back and wait for the world to come to me. Rather than waiting for this academic year to go by without me doing anything to earn college credit, I found a way to earn college credit through an online course providing platform, Study.com, who partners with a number of accredited colleges and universities. In August 2025, I subscribed to Study.com’s lower-course level subscription model. For $125/month, I can enroll in two concurrent courses at a time. As soon as I complete a course, I can enroll in another course. The transferability of course credits will depend on which college I eventually transfer to. Currently, there are several schools that I am highly considering to transfer my Study.com credits to: Thomas Edison State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Excelsior University (which I only did more research about AFTER I had made the video accompanying this application). At this time, I am tentatively planning on transferring the course credits to Excelsior University. Since August 2025, I have completed 18 3-credit courses that should be transferable to Excelsior for their Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts degree program. My goal is to complete at least two more lower-level 3-credit courses by early February 2026. At that point, I will have subscribed to Study.com’s lower subscription for six months and I expect to have completed 60 transferable credits at a total cost of $750. That works out to $12.50/credit or $37.50/course – the most economical college credit option I could find. At that point, I will need to upgrade to Study.com’s higher-level subscription to access upper-level courses. Excelsior will allow me to transfer in up to 104 course credits. My plan is to complete another 15 3-credit courses at the upper level through Study.com over a five-month period. That upper level subscription will cost $250/month, or $1,250 for the five months. In short, by the time I am ready to transfer to Excelsior, I plan to have earned 105 credits at a total cost of $2,000 or even less, if I can keep on pace. This scholarship will help me to continue my studies through Study.com and prepare me to transfer to Excelsior University, possibly as soon as July 2026. Including tuition and per-credit fees, I anticipate each Excelsior credit to cost $528. With 16 credits to be completed at Excelsior, at current costs, I anticipate the remaining cost to be $8,448 plus books, so perhaps a total of $9,000. In short, between Study.com and Excelsior, I hope to earn my Bachelor’s degree at a total cost of $11,000, perhaps even less. Considering that is less than a single year of tuition at our local state university would have been, I believe that I have found the best way to use my limited financial resources wisely. Again, I am asking for your financial support through this scholarship. In 2015, an SPCA administrator took a chance on me for the SPCA, creating a Junior Volunteer program. In 2025, I am asking for you to take a chance on me to support my educational and career goals. Thank you in advance for your consideration.