Growing up in Venezuela I heard how people wished for our country to be peaceful and free. Venezuela's government being a dictatorship and the hyperinflation made this wish seem impossible. There was a shortage of food,healthcare and housing in Venezuela. These conditions lead to many families fleeing the country and seek asylum. My family was one of those. My parents made the difficult choice to leave behind our home,family,and careers just so me and my sister could have a chance at a better and safer life in the United States. When we moved to the United States “The Land of the Free” I believed everything would finally be peaceful. But after arriving,I slowly started to realize that freedom wasn't guaranteed. Especially when you are an immigrant,undocumented and are trying to start a new life. My parents couldn’t work at first because we had no legal status. They gave up their careers and looked for jobs that were way worse than what they were qualified for. Shortly after receiving asylum my family had a hard time finding a good stable income due to language barriers and discrimination. Watching my parents struggle during our first few years showed me that the freedom people seek isn’t simple to obtain. It requires sacrifice and strength. Throughout my life here in the United States and my experiences,I started to wonder what “freedom” really is. A time I experienced how complicated freedom could really be was during my junior year of high school. I decided to participate in Educators Rising,I competed in lesson planning and managed to place 9th in Kentucky. That earned me a spot at nationals. Unfortunately due my parents worries of immigration policies being enforced and people being detained just for their skin color and even just their name. My parents made a choice and told me that I should stay and not attend nationals. I understood this choice but I still believed that this was extremely unfair and I gave up this accomplishment just because of where I'm from. This moment made me question what freedom really was and if it was something that is achievable for a family like mine. Even with all these challenges happening at the time. School became a place where I felt safe when my family was struggling. A lot of the teachers who taught me and helped me throughout my life in school really impacted my life and because of them I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in education. I came to the conclusion that educators have the power to impact younger generations,especially students who feel afraid moving to a new home,just like me . I wish to become a teacher that can create a place where all my students feel safe,included and free. I want to make a classroom where all students can be stress free and they can express their culture however they please. In my classroom I want my students to feel a sense of safety,understanding and acceptance no matter what the difference may be between my students. I know that this is a hard goal achieving this balance of peace and freedom may will challenging and maybe impossible to even achieve but I want to use the freedom and opportunity that has been given to me to create a better and safer place for children in the future. I want to make up for what my parents gave up by becoming a teacher who helps students inspires students to find their voice,peace and freedom so they can grow up to be even better people in the future

Moving from Venezuela, to where I live now, the U.S has helped me understand the value of money and how important it is to be responsible with it. When we first moved to the U.S it was difficult with hardly any money and no jobs my family struggled at first, but due to my parents way of managing money he helped us get to a better place now. Watching this experience first hand helped me realize just how important financial literacy skills are. Things like managing money, and savings. I plan to use all these financial skills I've learnt over my years to reach my goals and to create a financially strong future for myself and the people around me. When we first moved to the U.S. My parents told me and made it clear that we couldn't afford to spend money on things that weren't really useful . This experience lead to me being able to see how my parents not only save money carefully but also spend it carefully. Seeing this in person showed me self-control, discipline and why its important to spend your money wisely. these experience really taught me how to be more mindful on what and how I spend my money on and why it is important to set financial goals. When I got into high school I began taking a financial literacy class. This class has taught me things about budgeting, savings and debt management. Through this class I managed to expand my knowledge of financial decision making exponentially. Once I later got a job I started applying this knowledge onto my life. I started saving and setting goals towards things that I wanted or needed, I understood that doing putting a small chunk of my money into my savings could have a long term impact. These experiences helped me build upon my knowledge of finance and help me apply it to the real world. To build of these experiences, I want to continue to strengthen my financial literacy skills while I work towards my future. I'm about to graduate and about to go into college, I know that saving my money and avoiding useless spending will help me succeed in the future. All the financial skills I've learnt over the years will help me make smart decisions and allow me to become more stable financially. That will help me stay focus on my education while in college without having any stress. By winning this scholarship, it will help me lift the financial burden me and my parents have with college and will allow me to gain an education for my future. In conclusion, The knowledge I gained form moving from Venezuela to the United State and learning from my parents, and building on my own knowledge on financial literacy have helped me become a more responsible and well off individual. I believe I've learnt the value of money and how to save and plan for my future. I am set on applying this knowledge to achieve my future goals for the future and to get a higher level of education. Receiving this scholarship would really help relief the financial burden on my family and I. It would also really help me and motivate me to continue to learn in college to build a strong and secure future. I am set on using what I know to make smart financial decisions in the future to create a good future for myself.