Helping Hand Fund

Success means achieving a balance in life. It means achieving your goals and going above them to continue looking for opportunities to better yourself. Success means that you have fulfilled your goals while growing as a result of your journey. Because you have achieved that balance, you can now help those around you as they strive for success. Growing up, I remember my parents always being in debt. We had to decide whether to pay the rent or buy groceries and we moved from apartment to apartment. However, we persevered and now we found an affordable apartment that allows us to be able to buy groceries and everything else we need. My parents succeeded at raising my brother and I to be healthy and determined children. They succeeded at volunteering for the community while working full-time. They succeeded at tackling life’s challenges and getting through the debt together rather than letting it drive them apart. We have grown as people because of our journey, and I will continue to learn as I continue to strive for success. Although my parents and my grandparents were not able to attain a college degree, I am determined to follow my dreams and take the opportunity to live a fulfilling life. My desire for success has only intensified over the years especially after my father passed to brain cancer in 2023. Life is too short to not take advantage of its opportunities. Essentially, I have realized that success is being able to lead a fulfilling life and positively impacting not only yourself but those around you. I have gone to advocate at Head to the Hill for brain tumor awareness. I met so inspiring people: doctors, patients, nurses, caregivers, and more. Despite their hardships, I saw a fire within every single one of them. In their eyes I saw the fire of perseverance. They’ve grown as a result of their hardships and that is why they come every year to continue to advocate for change not only for their loved ones but for everyone else’s. I want to be like them and continue to advocate and look for more opportunities to aid the community. Success makes you grow as a person because you learn to persevere despite your circumstances. This scholarship will allow me to continue to strive towards my goals without having to worry about burdening my family. I will be able to continue putting all my effort into passing my classes and taking internships to gain valuable experience rather than having to worry about working and paying off my student loans. I want to continue to volunteer with the National Brain Tumor Society and continue to advocate for brain tumor awareness rather than have to dedicate my time to working so I can pay off my loans. This scholarship would mean the world to me because it will allow me to reach my full potential and take full advantage of my resources.

Success to me means breaking generational curses and taking advantage of the American Dream that I wasn't meant to have access to. I'm from an immigrant Habesha household that reinforced, for all the grandchildren in my family, the idea that we needed to attend an Ivy League and become a lawyer or doctor. After a quick Google search ("jobs that make the most money"), I was committed to becoming an anesthesiologist from sixth grade to my sophomore year of high school. In my sophomore year, I joined the Social Justice Academy at my school, a three-year cohort program based in ethnic studies and social justice. I learned concepts that challenged what we'd been taught in K-12 education like ikigai, the idea of finding intersections between what you're passionate about, good at, and what can make you money. I also learned about community cultural wealth, and how a symptom of capitalism is manipulating people into believing that the wisdom they learn from their communities is inferior to money. The lessons spoke to me; they were different from anything I had heard at home or in my career readiness class at school. For a while, I was angry with the adults in my life for what I felt was trapping me into a life I didn't want. It wasn't until the next year, in my U.S. Hxstory course, that I realized my anger needed to be redirected. I learned about the African Diaspora, and how many Black people were genocided and colonized because of Western imperialism. I realized that a part of that colonization that had successfully influenced the way my family thought was mental, and that they were taught that money is synonymous with success. Ethnic studies taught me that my life is worth more than capitalistic standards of success. I've been able to build my goals around my values and passions; I plan to major in English at Clark Atlanta University, and to become a high school teacher at a school that predominantly serves students of color. I want to do this because teaching is my ikigai; I love writing, education, and giving back to my community. I want to be a part of an education movement that teaches students of color that they are more than what this country wants to use them for, or a predetermined life plan built on colonized mindsets. This scholarship will help me achieve my goal by funding my journey to Atlanta. I am not getting financial help from my family; they look down on the idea of me going to an HBCU because they've been taught that an institution is useless if it's not prestigious in the eyes of future employers, who they automatically assume to be white. They also look down on me for majoring in English because they've never seen someone with an art or teaching career have the amount of affluence they deem acceptable. I understand where they're coming from because I know what they had to go through to assimilate in this country, and to them, what I plan to do uproots everything they've worked for, but I don't plan on changing any of my goals. This scholarship will be a stepping stone towards creating an amazing life for myself by serving my communities and staying true to my values regardless of money, and showing my younger siblings and cousins that they can do the same for themselves, because that is the most radical thing you can do for your people in a country that has taught you that you are not allowed to dream.