The first time I saw my father cough up blood, I didn't know what to do. He was already sick. His back was broken, and headaches that wouldn't stop had become part of our lives. But seeing blood made his illness feel different. For the first time, I understood that the person I depended on might not always be there. I remember wondering what my family would do without him. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through what he did every day: work, sacrifice, and showing up. For years, he worked long shifts and sometimes came home at 2 AM, heated up rice, and still asked about my homework. A few hours later, he would get up again at 6 AM. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. When his health broke down, my mother went back to work to support him. I watched her carry our family without complaining. I watched both of my parents keep moving forward when life gave them every reason to stop. That became one of the most important lessons of my childhood: strength is not always loud. Sometimes, it is simply showing up. It also gave me a goal: one day, I want my parents to retire and finally live in peace. That goal changed the way I understood service. When the bike program I had worked with in high school shut down, the students it served were left without the opportunity they had been given. I could have accepted that as the end. Instead, I started 4Hope Kenya. Building 4Hope has forced me to grow into the kind of leader I want to be. During our first call with our partner center in Nairobi, I asked a question I should have asked from the beginning: “What do the students actually want?” Their answer changed how I thought about leadership. They wanted to learn bike safety, build their own bikes, and gain skills that could lead to real work. I realized something important: helping people isn't about deciding what they need from a distance. It starts with listening. 4Hope has not been perfect. Volunteers disappeared for months. Interviews fell through because of my own scheduling mistakes. There were weeks when balancing the organization with school caused my schoolwork to slip. Instead of hiding those failures, I learned from them. I learned to communicate more clearly, set better expectations, admit when I was wrong, and share responsibility instead of trying to carry everything myself. Today, 4Hope has a team of 18 volunteers. We have written an engineering curriculum, partnered with a center in Nairobi, and designed bikes around real constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, and parts students can find and repair themselves. We are preparing our first pilot so students can build their own bikes. At the same time, I am studying electrical engineering at City College as the first person in my family to attend college. I want to become an engineer who builds technology for people who cannot simply replace something when it breaks. Growing up taught me where I come from. My parents taught me why perseverance matters. 4Hope is teaching me how to turn that lesson into action. But I am still becoming the person I want to be. I want to build a career that gives my parents the peace they worked for while creating opportunities for people who have not always had them. I want to keep learning how to lead, keep building things that solve real problems, and keep showing up when walking away would be easier. My parents showed up for me through sickness and exhaustion. Now I am showing up for them - and for the students eight time zones away.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness—the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes the inequality make sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy from my father. He works two jobs—weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through showing up at 2 AM for two decades. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. That's the leadership model I'm building: consistent, unglamorous action that serves real needs. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the industry I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike - a program teaching Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering - collapsed after organizational dysfunction went unaddressed, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. This is how I give back now: twenty-three students learning weekly, Ferdinand teaching younger children, students presenting their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. At Queens Community House, I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to seniors-not because it looks good on applications, but because my father showed me that showing up is what matters. My plan is deliberate, not just aspirational. 4Hope's core bottleneck is workshop funding: roughly $161 per bike in materials, $2,500 in tools, and $1,500 for space - about $8,000 to launch. I'm pursuing youth-focused microgrants like the EU Youth Empowerment Fund, which offers up to €5,000 without requiring years of institutional history, while building the nonprofit foundation needed for larger funding later. My goal: an operational workshop within the year, funded incrementally rather than waiting on one large grant. But 4Hope taught me something bigger: sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating local jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. "Good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. The plan I'm building will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have equipment that works. Products they can fix. Solutions designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's a plan. And I intend to work it.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes the inequality make sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy from my father. He works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through showing up at 2 AM for two decades. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. That's the leadership model I'm building: consistent, unglamorous action that serves real needs. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the industry I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed after I discovered funds meant for orphans were redirected to promotional activities, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. This is how I give back now: twenty-three students learning weekly, Ferdinand teaching younger children, students presenting their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. At Queens Community House, I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors-not because it looks good on applications, but because my father showed me that showing up is what matters. But 4Hope taught me something bigger: sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone involved. That's the legacy I'm building as a first-generation student: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. I'm developing this business model through market research on manufacturing costs, partnerships with Nairobi fabricators, and direct feedback from the students I serve. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating local jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. "Good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. The company I'm building will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have equipment that works. Products they can fix. Solutions designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness. The orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." That moment is the clearest picture of who I am and who I am becoming. I grew up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student watching my father work two jobs - weekday shifts, weekend hotel work - coming home exhausted at 2 AM to heat up rice and ask about my homework. He never taught leadership through speeches. He taught it by showing up unglamorously and consistently every single day. That is the man I am building myself to become. When I nearly failed Algebra 2 there was no tutoring budget. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point there was no safety net. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and earned an A. When the nonprofit I had invested a year building collapsed after funds meant for orphaned students were misused I did not walk away. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program from nothing. No funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers and an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics and materials engineering. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger children. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water carrier modification I built into our curriculum. Now she teaches it to others. That is not charity. That is communities teaching themselves. My dream is to study Electrical Engineering at City College of New York and develop affordable sensor systems for bikes and essential infrastructure in low-resource communities - starting with Nairobi, scaling to every community that engineers forgot to design for. I am not waiting on this scholarship to keep going. I have already built something real from nothing. What this support gives me is the ability to do it right - with the education and resources behind it. Ferdinand fixed that weld himself. Not because someone did it for him. Because someone showed up and taught him how. That is the life I am building. For him. For every student after him. For every community that deserves solutions designed on their terms - not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness. The orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." That moment is the clearest picture of who I am and who I am becoming. I grew up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student watching my father work two jobs - weekday shifts, weekend hotel work - coming home exhausted at 2 AM to heat up rice and ask about my homework. He never taught leadership through speeches. He taught it by showing up unglamorously and consistently every single day. That is the man I am building myself to become. When I nearly failed Algebra 2 there was no tutoring budget. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point there was no safety net. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and earned an A. When the nonprofit I had invested a year building collapsed after funds meant for orphaned students were misused I did not walk away. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program from nothing. No funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers and an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics and materials engineering. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger children. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water carrier modification I built into our curriculum. Now she teaches it to others. That is not charity. That is communities teaching themselves. My dream is to study Electrical Engineering at City College of New York and develop affordable sensor systems for bikes and essential infrastructure in low-resource communities - starting with Nairobi, scaling to every community that engineers forgot to design for. I am not waiting on this scholarship to keep going. I have already built something real from nothing. What this support gives me is the ability to do it right - with the education and resources behind it. Ferdinand fixed that weld himself. Not because someone did it for him. Because someone showed up and taught him how. That is the life I am building. For him. For every student after him. For every community that deserves solutions designed on their terms - not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness. The orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." That moment is the clearest picture of who I am and who I am becoming. I grew up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student watching my father work two jobs - weekday shifts, weekend hotel work - coming home exhausted at 2 AM to heat up rice and ask about my homework. He never taught leadership through speeches. He taught it by showing up unglamorously and consistently every single day. That is the man I am building myself to become. When I nearly failed Algebra 2 there was no tutoring budget. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point there was no safety net. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and earned an A. When the nonprofit I had invested a year building collapsed after funds meant for orphaned students were misused I did not walk away. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program from nothing. No funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers and an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics and materials engineering. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger children. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water carrier modification I built into our curriculum. Now she teaches it to others. That is not charity. That is communities teaching themselves. My dream is to study Electrical Engineering at City College of New York and develop affordable sensor systems for bikes and essential infrastructure in low-resource communities - starting with Nairobi, scaling to every community that engineers forgot to design for. I am not waiting on this scholarship to keep going. I have already built something real from nothing. What this support gives me is the ability to do it right - with the education and resources behind it. Ferdinand fixed that weld himself. Not because someone did it for him. Because someone showed up and taught him how. That is the life I am building. For him. For every student after him. For every community that deserves solutions designed on their terms - not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine needs to cost $200?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy. My father works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. The next day, he's up at 6 AM to do it again. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the business I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed due to organizational fraud, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up weekly. Ferdinand teaches younger children now. Students present their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. 4Hope taught me that sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone. That's my legacy: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. My company will start with bicycles but scale to essential equipment: water pumps, solar systems, agricultural tools. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. At Queens Community House, where I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors, an 80-year-old man stopped my apologies about a crashing laptop: "I can see my grandson's face. That's all I need." That's the insight driving my entrepreneurship: "good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. Someday, the company I build will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have bikes that work. Equipment they can fix. Products designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. And that's how I shine my light-by engineering for the 2 AM economy, where people like my father and Ferdinand live. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine needs to cost $200?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy. My father works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. The next day, he's up at 6 AM to do it again. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the business I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed due to organizational fraud, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up weekly. Ferdinand teaches younger children now. Students present their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. 4Hope taught me that sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone. That's my legacy: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. My company will start with bicycles but scale to essential equipment: water pumps, solar systems, agricultural tools. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. At Queens Community House, where I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors, an 80-year-old man stopped my apologies about a crashing laptop: "I can see my grandson's face. That's all I need." That's the insight driving my entrepreneurship: "good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. Someday, the company I build will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have bikes that work. Equipment they can fix. Products designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. And that's how I shine my light-by engineering for the 2 AM economy, where people like my father and Ferdinand live. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

The first time I truly understood the power of education was not inside a classroom. It was through a bicycle chain, a physics lesson, and a conversation across thousands of miles. While explaining torque to a student in Kenya over WhatsApp, I held a bicycle chain in my hands and realized something had changed. What once felt like an abstract equation in Algebra II became something real. Force was no longer just a symbol on a page; it was something I could feel, explain, and share with someone else. In that moment, I understood that education is not only about learning information. It is about transforming knowledge into possibility. That is what going to college means to me. College represents the opportunity to deepen my understanding, challenge myself, and gain the tools to create meaningful solutions for communities that are often overlooked. I do not want an education simply because I want a career. I want an education because I believe knowledge carries a responsibility: once we have the ability to solve problems, we have a responsibility to use that ability to serve others. Growing up in Queens, I was surrounded by different cultures, experiences, and perspectives. Those communities taught me that every problem has a human story behind it. This understanding shaped how I view engineering. A successful solution is not just one that works technically; it is one that understands the people it is designed for. I learned this through my work with students in Kenya. I joined a program focused on teaching bicycle engineering, hoping to combine my passion for STEM with my desire to help others. When the organization eventually collapsed due to internal problems, I faced a difficult choice: walk away or find another way forward. The students who had trusted us were still there. They still wanted to learn. With volunteers, I helped rebuild the program through WhatsApp, creating lessons and continuing to teach bicycle physics and engineering concepts. Over time, students began developing their own ideas and sharing their creativity. One student, Grace, designed a modification for a water carrier and later taught that concept to others. Watching her confidence grow showed me that education is not just about giving people answers. It is about helping them believe they are capable of creating answers themselves. My own educational journey has required that same belief. When I struggled in Algebra II, I questioned whether I belonged in STEM. Instead of accepting that struggle as a limitation, I changed my approach. I sought help, developed new strategies, and rebuilt my confidence. Later, when I missed my school’s Calculus AB cutoff by one point, I enrolled in Calculus 1 at Hudson Valley Community College. That experience taught me that growth comes from seeking challenges, not avoiding them. Through college, I hope to continue combining engineering, education, and community service. I want to develop the technical skills necessary to design accessible solutions while continuing to listen to the communities those solutions are meant to serve. My goal is to create technology and educational opportunities that help others recognize their own potential. As a student from an underrepresented background, I understand how powerful access to opportunity can be. A college education represents more than personal achievement. It represents the ability to open doors for myself while helping create more opportunities for others. The greatest value of my education will not only be what I learn, but what I am able to give back. College is where I will continue turning curiosity into knowledge, knowledge into action, and opportunity into impact.

My awkward thing is simple: I am an engineer who cries at poetry. And a poet who calculates torque. My desk has never looked completely normal. A calculator sits beside a notebook filled with poems, and sketches of bicycle frames share space with unfinished homework. To me, this has always made perfect sense. To everyone else, it was confusing. They understood engineers who built things and poets who felt things, but they did not always know what to do with someone who did both. For a long time, neither did I. Growing up in Queens, I never seemed to fit into one category. In physics class, I wrote poems in my notes. In English class, I sketched bicycle frame designs in the margins. I was too emotional for some engineers and too analytical for some artists. People would ask me, “Why not just pick one?” The hardest part was not that other people saw me as different. The hardest part was that I started wondering if they were right. Eventually, I realized the things that seemed like contradictions were actually the things that made me who I am. When I nearly failed Algebra II, no textbook explanation could reach me. The equations felt like meaningless symbols on a page. Then one day, I held a bicycle chain while explaining torque to a student in Kenya over WhatsApp. To someone else, it was just a chain. To me, it became a way to understand the world. I could feel the force moving through each link, each part depending on another. Suddenly, derivatives were no longer just formulas. They represented something physical and real. The poet in me needed to feel it first. The engineer in me knew what to do next. That combination has followed me everywhere. My backpack carries a wrench beside a notebook filled with unfinished poems. When I design something, I think about the person who will use it. When I write, I think about the details that create meaning. I have learned that creativity and logic are not opposites. They make each other stronger. I discovered that during one of the hardest moments of my work with students in Kenya. When the nonprofit I worked with collapsed, 157 students suddenly lost their engineering program. I did not see a number. I saw students, conversations, and people who trusted us. The poet in me saw the human side of the problem. The engineer in me searched for a solution. With no funding and no established structure, I worked with volunteers to rebuild the program through WhatsApp and a curriculum created from scratch. One student, Grace, designed a modification for a water carrier that became part of our lessons. Seeing her confidently explain her idea reminded me why I build: not just to create solutions, but to help others believe they can create them too. Charles B. Brazelton’s story reminds me that our gifts do not always appear where people expect them to. Charles was left-handed, but basketball was not where he found his talent. Swimming was. The thing that made him different was connected to the thing that made him special. My difference has always been the space between a wrench and a pen. Between late-night poetry and late-night engineering calls. Between feeling deeply and building boldly. For years, I thought I needed to choose between those parts of myself. Now I understand that the space between them is where I belong. I still carry both a notebook and a wrench. One helps me understand the world, and the other helps me change it.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness - the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." That moment is the clearest picture of who I am becoming and who I am working to be. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs - weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. He came home exhausted at 2 AM, heated up rice, asked about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. He never taught leadership through speeches. He taught it by showing up - unglamorously, consistently, every single day regardless of how hard things got. That is the man I am building myself to become. My path has not been easy or straight. I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me until I held a bike chain and explained torque to Ferdinand over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link - suddenly derivatives made sense. Not as symbols but as something I could feel. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point and we could not afford alternatives, I did not quit. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and earned an A. When the nonprofit I had invested a year building collapsed due to mismanagement - 157 Kenyan students losing everything overnight - I did not walk away. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program from nothing. No funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers, and an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics and materials engineering. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger children. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification I incorporated into our touring bike design - now she teaches that innovation to new students. That is my dream made real - not charity, but communities teaching themselves. My vision is to study Electrical Engineering at City College of New York and develop affordable sensor and diagnostic systems for bikes and essential infrastructure in low-resource communities. Starting with Nairobi. Scaling to every community that engineers forgot to design for. Treye's family describes wanting to support a young man with strong character and work ethic on his way toward a faithful, intentional, meaningful life. I cannot claim perfection. But I can claim this - I have never quit when systems failed around me. I have rebuilt from wreckage more than once. I show up at 2 AM when Ferdinand calls because that is what matters. This $1,500 scholarship directly reduces the financial pressure that makes everything harder. I work part-time hours just to keep up. This support gives me the ability to focus fully on my education and continue building 4Hope at the same time. I am not waiting on this scholarship to keep going. I have already built something real from nothing. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. Ferdinand fixed that weld himself. That is the life I am building. For him. For every student after him.

I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations on a whiteboard meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain in my hand, explaining torque to Ferdinand in Kenya over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link-suddenly I understood what derivatives measured. Not as abstract symbols, but as the rate of change I could feel when I twisted that chain. That's when I discovered why I'm passionate about STEM: because it transforms abstract concepts into tools that solve real problems for real people. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts plus weekend hotel work. He'd come home exhausted, heat up rice, ask about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue STEM education. But he made sure I could. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, we couldn't afford the tutoring my classmates had. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, there was no test prep budget. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and taught myself about A-connecting derivatives to bike velocity, integrals to area under drag curves, optimization to real engineering constraints. That struggle revealed two truths that fuel my passion: STEM education should be accessible to everyone, and the best engineering solutions come from diverse perspectives-especially from people who understand constraints most programs never consider. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to design hurricane evacuation logistics. But the technical challenge wasn't what excited me most-it was the human question underneath: which communities get abandoned when disasters hit? That's STEM's power: computational thinking applied to social justice. This same principle drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 orphans bicycle engineering. These aren't recreational bikes-they're survival infrastructure for kids who need to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads. STEM gives me frameworks to ask better questions: not "what's the strongest material?" but "what's strongest for whom?" Not "what's the most efficient solution?" but "what's efficient within these constraints?" Two bikes are production-ready now. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification that I incorporated into our touring bike design-now she presents her engineering process to new students. That's STEM education creating independence, not dependency. That's when I understood: STEM isn't about perfect solutions. It's about solutions that work for the people who actually need them. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I'm passionate about STEM because it's the only field where intellectual rigor directly serves human needs. Physics isn't just equations-it's bikes that work on unpaved roads. Computer science isn't just algorithms-it's evacuation routes that save overlooked communities. Materials science isn't just properties-it's frames Ferdinand can repair himself. My passion comes from both dimensions: the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems and the moral imperative of making those solutions accessible. My father works two jobs so I can pursue STEM education. I'm pursuing it so students like Ferdinanand-like I was-have teachers who make physics click through hands-on demonstrations, who design curricula for students who learn differently, who believe everyone deserves problem-solving tools regardless of ZIP code. Because STEM transforms lives when made accessible. That's my passion. That's my purpose.

It was 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone lit up - WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face filled the screen, lit by a single candle. The orphanage loses power at 10 PM."The brake cable is stuck," he said. Behind him, five younger boys sat cross-legged on the floor, watching.I had a pre-calculus exam in six hours. I'd just finished a library shift. My father was asleep down the hall - he'd come home at midnight from his second job, reheated rice quietly so he wouldn't wake anyone, and gone straight to bed. We don't have the luxury of giving up when we're tired. Neither do the kids in that orphanage.So I stayed on the call. I didn't give Ferdinand the answer. I walked him through finding it himself - because next time, I might not pick up. Three months later, he called again. Not with a problem. To tell me he'd just taught a younger kid the same repair. That's the moment I understood what service actually means.I didn't start there. In 2023, I joined a school program teaching Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering as Research Director for 157 students. These weren't recreational bikes - for kids navigating theft, dangerous roads, and unreliable school access, a working bicycle is survival. I believed in the mission completely.But when our director approved incomplete bike designs and flew to Kenya for photo-ops while students kept asking when their bikes would come, I stayed silent. I told myself it wasn't my place. I was already stretched - nearly failing Algebra 2, working part-time, figuring out college as a first-generation student with no roadmap. Speaking up felt like one more thing I couldn't afford.I was wrong. When I finally raised concerns, I was dismissed. Six months later, the program collapsed. One hundred fifty-seven students lost everything. The Kenyan kids who had shown up every single week - gone. I thought about my father. He never waited for systems to fix themselves. Two jobs, midnight rice, back up at six. Not silence - strategy. You show up anyway. You build around what's broken.So I did.With no funding and no institutional support, I contacted the Kenyan orphanages directly. Through WhatsApp and volunteers I recruited myself, I rebuilt from scratch - a full curriculum, three bike designs built around $200 budgets and unpaved roads, parts available in Nairobi, repairable by teenagers with basic tools. I called it 4Hope. Twenty-three students show up every week now. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water-jug carrier modification - and now she teaches it to new students herself. Ferdinand leads weekly workshops for younger children. The community sustains itself. That's what changed how I approach everything - school, service, my future. I stopped waiting for perfect conditions and started building inside the constraints I actually had. I enrolled myself in college Calculus after missing my school's cutoff by one point. I earned an A. Not because the path got easier, but because I stopped treating obstacles as reasons to stop.Helen Segarra Gutierrez believed in young people and in the power of showing up quietly - not for recognition, but because someone needed it. I've tried to live that. Not perfectly. But consistently. Ferdinand teaches now. Grace teaches now. Twelve seniors at Queens Community House can video call their grandchildren independently - one of them teaches other residents.That's the only measure of service I trust: does it create more people who give back?I'm still becoming. But I know what's magnetizing my compass.

The bird was dying on Roosevelt Avenue. A kid hovered over it, trying to help. His mother filmed on her phone. The bird's wing dragged across concrete, broken. A year ago, I would have kept walking. "I'll take care of it," I told them. No hesitation this time. I called vets until one answered-they could take it tomorrow morning. A waiter from the Thai restaurant offered to keep it overnight in a box. The next morning, I cut windows in a shoebox for airflow, lined it with tissue, used my old shirt as a cover, and delivered the bird myself. It wasn't about the bird. It was about who I'd become since failing 157 students in Kenya. At Stuybike, I'd been Research Director teaching Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads at night. I designed a curriculum on bicycle physics while other teams handled wheels, gears, brakes. Then our director approved an incomplete design-only my frame research existed-and left for Kenya for photo ops. Kids kept asking over video calls when the bikes would come. I saw it happening. Said nothing. I told myself: don't make waves. Keep your head down. That's what gets results. Growing up in a parent household in Queens NY, I'd watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. He came home exhausted, heated up rice, asked about my AP Pre-Calculus homework. Never complained. Never asked for help. Just showed up. When I missed Stuyvesant's Calculus cutoff by one point and we couldn't afford alternatives, he didn't fight the school. He said, "You'll find another way." So I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently. I thought that was his lesson: work around problems quietly. Accept broken systems. Stay silent. When I finally raised concerns, I was dismissed. Six months later, Stuybike collapsed. 157 students lost everything. Kenyan kids who'd shown up weekly, trusted us-gone. Watching that program fall apart, made me finally understand what I'd been missing about my father. He wasn't teaching me silence. He was showing me to ACT even when systems fail you. Those two jobs? That's action. Showing up exhausted? That's action. Working around obstacles when you can't fight head-on? That's not silence-that's strategy. He never quit when things got hard. Bills don't pause because systems are broken. You show up anyway. So I did. I contacted the Kenyan administrator directly. Another former director and I bypassed Stuybike-just WhatsApp and volunteers. Rebuilt the curriculum: eight units on mechanics, physics, materials. Designed three bikes for $200 budgets and unpaved roads. Started a YouTube channel for when internet fails. Twenty-three students show up weekly now. Ferdinand, one of the first, teaches younger kids. At 2 AM on a Tuesday, he called-his brake cable was stuck. I talked him through fixing it. Behind him, five younger students waited for him to teach them. That's when I knew it worked. And that's why, three months later, I didn't walk past the injured bird. At Stuybike, I misunderstood my father's lesson and stayed silent too long-I could only rebuild from wreckage. With Ferdinand and 4Hope, I understood: show up, act, build solutions. With the bird, I didn't even question it. My father wasn't teaching me silence. He was teaching me that real resilience means acting when systems fail you, even when you're exhausted, even when it's easier to walk away. I'd finally learned his actual lesson. Now I show up. For Ferdinand's 2 AM calls. For injured birds on Roosevelt Avenue. For the next challenge. That's my father's resilience. And now it's mine.

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone buzzes. WhatsApp call from Kenya - Ferdinand's face fills the screen, lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses power after 10 PM. Behind him, five younger boys sit cross-legged on the floor, waiting. "I taught them the brake repair," he says. "Like you showed me." That moment is why I want to study mechanical engineering. Not because it sounds impressive, but because it's the only field where I've watched knowledge actually change someone's life. Growing up in Queens, my father worked two jobs. There was no budget for tutoring, no family connections to college, no backup plan when things fell through. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. One afternoon, an 80-year-old man's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing for the computer. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." That stopped me cold. I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. That moment changed how I think about solving problems - and it's driven everything I've done since. That same mindset is behind 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, which I founded after the organization I was part of fell apart. We were teaching Kenyan orphans to build bicycles - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, stay safe at night. When leadership prioritized photo-ops over finishing the actual bike designs, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program shut down and 157 students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I went directly to the orphanages - no formal structure, just WhatsApp and volunteers. I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch: eight units on mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We designed three bikes built around Kenya's real constraints - unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger kids. We started a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when internet cuts out. Academically, I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. But once I started teaching physics through bike mechanics - torque through a chain, Faraday's Law through e-bike motors - it clicked. I went from nearly failing to earning an A in college-level Calculus 1, which I enrolled in independently after missing my high school's cutoff by one point. Struggling didn't mean I wasn't capable. It meant I needed someone to make the material matter - which is exactly what I try to do for my students now. My goal is to study mechanical engineering and go into design - specifically the kind of work where you're building systems for people who never get asked what they need. Water infrastructure. Low-cost energy. Transportation for places no one thinks about. Not perfect solutions. Real ones. Built around what people actually have. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that makes all of this harder - I work part-time hours just to keep up. But I want to be clear: I'm not waiting on this to keep going. I've already built a program from nothing, twice, with no funding and no institutional support. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. And when I do, it won't just be Ferdinand's orphanage that benefits. It'll be every community that engineers forgot to design for.

I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations on a whiteboard meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain in my hand, explaining torque to Ferdinand in Kenya over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link-suddenly I understood what derivatives measured. Not as abstract symbols, but as the rate of change I could feel when I twisted that chain. That's when I discovered why I'm passionate about STEM: because it transforms abstract concepts into tools that solve real problems for real people. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts plus weekend hotel work. He'd come home exhausted, heat up rice, ask about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue STEM education. But he made sure I could. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, we couldn't afford the tutoring my classmates had. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, there was no test prep budget. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and taught myself about A-connecting derivatives to bike velocity, integrals to area under drag curves, optimization to real engineering constraints. That struggle revealed two truths that fuel my passion: STEM education should be accessible to everyone, and the best engineering solutions come from diverse perspectives-especially from people who understand constraints most programs never consider. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to design hurricane evacuation logistics. But the technical challenge wasn't what excited me most-it was the human question underneath: which communities get abandoned when disasters hit? That's STEM's power: computational thinking applied to social justice. This same principle drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 orphans bicycle engineering. These aren't recreational bikes-they're survival infrastructure for kids who need to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads. STEM gives me frameworks to ask better questions: not "what's the strongest material?" but "what's strongest for whom?" Not "what's the most efficient solution?" but "what's efficient within these constraints?" Two bikes are production-ready now. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification that I incorporated into our touring bike design-now she presents her engineering process to new students. That's STEM education creating independence, not dependency. That's when I understood: STEM isn't about perfect solutions. It's about solutions that work for the people who actually need them. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I'm passionate about STEM because it's the only field where intellectual rigor directly serves human needs. Physics isn't just equations-it's bikes that work on unpaved roads. Computer science isn't just algorithms-it's evacuation routes that save overlooked communities. Materials science isn't just properties-it's frames Ferdinand can repair himself. My passion comes from both dimensions: the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems and the moral imperative of making those solutions accessible. My father works two jobs so I can pursue STEM education. I'm pursuing it so students like Ferdinanand-like I was-have teachers who make physics click through hands-on demonstrations, who design curricula for students who learn differently, who believe everyone deserves problem-solving tools regardless of ZIP code. Because STEM transforms lives when made accessible. That's my passion. That's my purpose.

I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations on a whiteboard meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain in my hand, explaining torque to Ferdinand in Kenya over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link-suddenly I understood what derivatives measured. Not as abstract symbols, but as the rate of change I could feel when I twisted that chain. That's when I discovered why I'm passionate about STEM: because it transforms abstract concepts into tools that solve real problems for real people. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts plus weekend hotel work. He'd come home exhausted, heat up rice, ask about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue STEM education. But he made sure I could. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, we couldn't afford the tutoring my classmates had. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, there was no test prep budget. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and taught myself about A-connecting derivatives to bike velocity, integrals to area under drag curves, optimization to real engineering constraints. That struggle revealed two truths that fuel my passion: STEM education should be accessible to everyone, and the best engineering solutions come from diverse perspectives-especially from people who understand constraints most programs never consider. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to design hurricane evacuation logistics. But the technical challenge wasn't what excited me most-it was the human question underneath: which communities get abandoned when disasters hit? That's STEM's power: computational thinking applied to social justice. This same principle drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 orphans bicycle engineering. These aren't recreational bikes-they're survival infrastructure for kids who need to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads. STEM gives me frameworks to ask better questions: not "what's the strongest material?" but "what's strongest for whom?" Not "what's the most efficient solution?" but "what's efficient within these constraints?" Two bikes are production-ready now. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification that I incorporated into our touring bike design-now she presents her engineering process to new students. That's STEM education creating independence, not dependency. That's when I understood: STEM isn't about perfect solutions. It's about solutions that work for the people who actually need them. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I'm passionate about STEM because it's the only field where intellectual rigor directly serves human needs. Physics isn't just equations-it's bikes that work on unpaved roads. Computer science isn't just algorithms-it's evacuation routes that save overlooked communities. Materials science isn't just properties-it's frames Ferdinand can repair himself. My passion comes from both dimensions: the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems and the moral imperative of making those solutions accessible. My father works two jobs so I can pursue STEM education. I'm pursuing it so students like Ferdinanand-like I was-have teachers who make physics click through hands-on demonstrations, who design curricula for students who learn differently, who believe everyone deserves problem-solving tools regardless of ZIP code. Because STEM transforms lives when made accessible. That's my passion. That's my purpose.

My father never gave a speech about service. He came home after 2 AM, reheated rice with hands still shaking from exhaustion, and asked about my homework. Then he was up again at 6 AM. Two jobs, no complaints, no recognition. Just showing up - for me, our family, whatever the day required. That is the model of service I grew up inside. Not grand gestures. Consistent, unglamorous presence for the people who need you. I built my life around it. For over 400 hours at Queens Community House in Jackson Heights, I teach digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors on donated laptops that crash mid-lesson. I troubleshoot failing hardware, explain video calling across language barriers, and redesign lessons around broken equipment rather than waiting for better resources. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I didn't solve their problems. I stayed long enough to help them solve their own. At Poets House library, I show up every Friday: shelving books, coordinating open mics, walking the library dog past Shake Shack. Small things. Steady presence. The same people, week after week, knowing I'll be there. That consistency is the core of what I believe service means. Real service doesn't create dependency. It builds capacity - and then it keeps showing up anyway. That belief was tested in 2023. I joined a school program teaching bicycle engineering to Kenyan orphans - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, and stay safe at night. When our director approved an incomplete bike design and left for Kenya to take photos while students kept asking when the bikes would come, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program collapsed. One hundred fifty-seven students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I contacted the orphanages directly and rebuilt from nothing - no funding, no institution, just WhatsApp and volunteers I recruited myself. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering bike mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We created three bike designs built around Kenya's actual constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, locally available parts, repairable with basic tools. We launched a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when the internet cuts out. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand, one of the first, teaches younger children at his orphanage. The community sustains itself. That is the question Mrs. Makins answered through ninety years of faith, teaching, and faithful presence at Beulah Baptist: does the work keep going after you leave? She mentored generations not by doing things for people, but by believing in them until they believed in themselves. That legacy is the standard I hold myself to. My pursuit of mechanical engineering is an extension of this commitment. I want to design systems for communities engineers typically overlook - affordable transportation, water infrastructure, tools built for repair rather than replacement. An 80-year-old man at Queens Community House once stopped my apologies about a crashing laptop: "I can see my grandson's face. That's all I need." That sentence is my engineering philosophy. Not perfect. Purposeful. Designed for the person in front of you, not the person you imagined. Service is not a chapter of my life. It is the habit I built watching my father show up exhausted and keep going. It is what I will carry into every classroom, every community, and every problem I am given the chance to solve. I won't walk past what I can fix. I never have.

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone buzzes. WhatsApp call from Kenya - Ferdinand's face fills the screen, lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses power after 10 PM. Behind him, five younger boys sit cross-legged on the floor, waiting. "I taught them the brake repair," he says. "Like you showed me." That moment is why I want to study mechanical engineering. Not because it sounds impressive, but because it's the only field where I've watched knowledge actually change someone's life. Growing up in Queens, my father worked two jobs. There was no budget for tutoring, no family connections to college, no backup plan when things fell through. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. One afternoon, an 80-year-old man's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing for the computer. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." That stopped me cold. I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. That moment changed how I think about solving problems - and it's driven everything I've done since. That same mindset is behind 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, which I founded after the organization I was part of fell apart. We were teaching Kenyan orphans to build bicycles - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, stay safe at night. When leadership prioritized photo-ops over finishing the actual bike designs, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program shut down and 157 students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I went directly to the orphanages - no formal structure, just WhatsApp and volunteers. I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch: eight units on mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We designed three bikes built around Kenya's real constraints - unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger kids. We started a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when internet cuts out. Academically, I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. But once I started teaching physics through bike mechanics - torque through a chain, Faraday's Law through e-bike motors - it clicked. I went from nearly failing to earning an A in college-level Calculus 1, which I enrolled in independently after missing my high school's cutoff by one point. Struggling didn't mean I wasn't capable. It meant I needed someone to make the material matter - which is exactly what I try to do for my students now. My goal is to study mechanical engineering and go into design - specifically the kind of work where you're building systems for people who never get asked what they need. Water infrastructure. Low-cost energy. Transportation for places no one thinks about. Not perfect solutions. Real ones. Built around what people actually have. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that makes all of this harder - I work part-time hours just to keep up. But I want to be clear: I'm not waiting on this to keep going. I've already built a program from nothing, twice, with no funding and no institutional support. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. And when I do, it won't just be Ferdinand's orphanage that benefits. It'll be every community that engineers forgot to design for.

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone buzzes. WhatsApp call from Kenya - Ferdinand's face fills the screen, lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses power after 10 PM. Behind him, five younger boys sit cross-legged on the floor, waiting. "I taught them the brake repair," he says. "Like you showed me." That moment is why I want to study mechanical engineering. Not because it sounds impressive, but because it's the only field where I've watched knowledge actually change someone's life. Growing up in Queens, my father worked two jobs. There was no budget for tutoring, no family connections to college, no backup plan when things fell through. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. One afternoon, an 80-year-old man's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing for the computer. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." That stopped me cold. I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. That moment changed how I think about solving problems - and it's driven everything I've done since. That same mindset is behind 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, which I founded after the organization I was part of fell apart. We were teaching Kenyan orphans to build bicycles - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, stay safe at night. When leadership prioritized photo-ops over finishing the actual bike designs, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program shut down and 157 students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I went directly to the orphanages - no formal structure, just WhatsApp and volunteers. I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch: eight units on mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We designed three bikes built around Kenya's real constraints - unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger kids. We started a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when internet cuts out. Academically, I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. But once I started teaching physics through bike mechanics - torque through a chain, Faraday's Law through e-bike motors - it clicked. I went from nearly failing to earning an A in college-level Calculus 1, which I enrolled in independently after missing my high school's cutoff by one point. Struggling didn't mean I wasn't capable. It meant I needed someone to make the material matter - which is exactly what I try to do for my students now. My goal is to study mechanical engineering and go into design - specifically the kind of work where you're building systems for people who never get asked what they need. Water infrastructure. Low-cost energy. Transportation for places no one thinks about. Not perfect solutions. Real ones. Built around what people actually have. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that makes all of this harder - I work part-time hours just to keep up. But I want to be clear: I'm not waiting on this to keep going. I've already built a program from nothing, twice, with no funding and no institutional support. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. And when I do, it won't just be Ferdinand's orphanage that benefits. It'll be every community that engineers forgot to design for.

My father came home after 2 AM most nights. He'd reheat rice with hands still shaking from exhaustion, ask about my homework, then be up again at 6. He never complained. He just showed up - because that's what love looks like when resources are scarce. Aserina Hill understood that. She sacrificed her own earnings so others could reach their potential, quietly, without recognition. Reading about her reminds me of my father, and of every person who gives what they can't afford to give because someone else's future matters. I'm a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, a first-generation, low-income student from Queens pursuing mechanical engineering. My path has been defined less by advantages than by what I built without them. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, there was no tutoring budget. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, I enrolled independently in college-level Calculus and earned an A. Each obstacle taught me the same thing: lacking resources doesn't mean lacking purpose. That lesson drove everything I've built outside the classroom. At Queens Community House, I taught digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors on donated laptops that constantly crashed. One afternoon, an 80-year-old's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. Twelve seniors now independently video call their families. One teaches other residents. The same principle led me to found 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program after the nonprofit I was part of collapsed due to mismanagement, leaving the Kenyan orphans it claimed to serve without the bicycle engineering education they'd been promised. I went directly to the orphanages. No funding, no formal structure - just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a rebuilt curriculum covering mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. Today, 23 students show up weekly. Ferdinand, one of my first, now teaches five younger children every Tuesday. Knowledge multiplied - that's the outcome I care about most. After high school, I plan to study mechanical engineering focused on affordable infrastructure for underserved communities: water systems, transportation, tools built around real constraints rather than ideal conditions. If I could start my own charity, it would be called Build for Real - because the communities I've served don't need impressive solutions, they need ones that actually work. Scaling exactly what 4Hope has proven, its mission would be designing engineering solutions with communities, not for them, serving students globally excluded from STEM not by lack of ability but by lack of access. Volunteer sessions wouldn't be lectures - they'd look like Ferdinand's brake repair becoming next week's lesson for five younger kids. Every session would train a local leader who sustains the program independently. Success wouldn't be measured by how many we helped, but by how many no longer need us. Aserina Hill never finished school, yet she funded the futures of people who did. That's the legacy I'm committed to carrying forward - for Ferdinand, for the seniors in Queens, and for every student who just needs someone to show up.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen - the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But — why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" That question exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. My father raised me alone in Queens. Two jobs, weekend hotel shifts, home at 2 AM, up again at 6. Money was always tight - but he never missed a day. He didn't teach leadership through speeches. He taught it by showing up. Bills don't wait. Neither do you. Ferdinand lives that same reality. His bike isn't recreation - it's survival. Water collection. School access. Safety. When it breaks, he's stranded. Global engineering doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford replacements. When Stuybike - serving 157 Kenyan orphans - collapsed after I discovered funds diverted away from students, I was devastated. I'd believed institutions could be trusted. They couldn't. So I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program myself: no funding, just WhatsApp, volunteers, and accountability. I designed an eight-unit curriculum in mechanics, physics, and materials engineering, with three bike models built for Kenya's roads, budgets, and locally available parts. Twenty-three students learn weekly. Ferdinand now teaches the younger ones. At Queens Community House, I've logged 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors - because my father showed me that showing up is work. Design real constraints. Manufacture locally. Build community trust. "Good enough for the person who needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." That's how I'm changing the world Ferdinand lives in - and the one I'm from.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes the inequality make sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy from my father. He works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through showing up at 2 AM for two decades. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. That's the leadership model I'm building: consistent, unglamorous action that serves real needs. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the industry I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed after I discovered funds meant for orphans were redirected to promotional activities, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. This is how I give back now: twenty-three students learning weekly, Ferdinand teaching younger children, students presenting their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. At Queens Community House, I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors-not because it looks good on applications, but because my father showed me that showing up is what matters. But 4Hope taught me something bigger: sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone involved. That's the legacy I'm building as a first-generation student: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. I'm developing this business model through market research on manufacturing costs, partnerships with Nairobi fabricators, and direct feedback from the students I serve. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating local jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. "Good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. The company I'm building will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have equipment that works. Products they can fix. Solutions designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes the inequality make sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy from my father. He works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through showing up at 2 AM for two decades. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. That's the leadership model I'm building: consistent, unglamorous action that serves real needs. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the industry I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed after I discovered funds meant for orphans were redirected to promotional activities, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. This is how I give back now: twenty-three students learning weekly, Ferdinand teaching younger children, students presenting their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. At Queens Community House, I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors-not because it looks good on applications, but because my father showed me that showing up is what matters. But 4Hope taught me something bigger: sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone involved. That's the legacy I'm building as a first-generation student: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. I'm developing this business model through market research on manufacturing costs, partnerships with Nairobi fabricators, and direct feedback from the students I serve. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating local jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. "Good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. The company I'm building will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have equipment that works. Products they can fix. Solutions designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations on a whiteboard meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain in my hand, explaining torque to Ferdinand in Kenya over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link-suddenly I understood what derivatives measured. Not as abstract symbols, but as the rate of change I could feel when I twisted that chain. That's when I discovered why I'm passionate about STEM: because it transforms abstract concepts into tools that solve real problems for real people. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts plus weekend hotel work. He'd come home exhausted, heat up rice, ask about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue STEM education. But he made sure I could. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, we couldn't afford the tutoring my classmates had. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, there was no test prep budget. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and taught myself about A-connecting derivatives to bike velocity, integrals to area under drag curves, optimization to real engineering constraints. That struggle revealed two truths that fuel my passion: STEM education should be accessible to everyone, and the best engineering solutions come from diverse perspectives-especially from people who understand constraints most programs never consider. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to design hurricane evacuation logistics. But the technical challenge wasn't what excited me most-it was the human question underneath: which communities get abandoned when disasters hit? That's STEM's power: computational thinking applied to social justice. This same principle drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 orphans bicycle engineering. These aren't recreational bikes-they're survival infrastructure for kids who need to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads. STEM gives me frameworks to ask better questions: not "what's the strongest material?" but "what's strongest for whom?" Not "what's the most efficient solution?" but "what's efficient within these constraints?" Two bikes are production-ready now. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification that I incorporated into our touring bike design-now she presents her engineering process to new students. That's STEM education creating independence, not dependency. That's when I understood: STEM isn't about perfect solutions. It's about solutions that work for the people who actually need them. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I'm passionate about STEM because it's the only field where intellectual rigor directly serves human needs. Physics isn't just equations-it's bikes that work on unpaved roads. Computer science isn't just algorithms-it's evacuation routes that save overlooked communities. Materials science isn't just properties-it's frames Ferdinand can repair himself. My passion comes from both dimensions: the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems and the moral imperative of making those solutions accessible. My father works two jobs so I can pursue STEM education. I'm pursuing it so students like Ferdinanand-like I was-have teachers who make physics click through hands-on demonstrations, who design curricula for students who learn differently, who believe everyone deserves problem-solving tools regardless of ZIP code. Because STEM transforms lives when made accessible. That's my passion. That's my purpose.

2 AM. My phone lights up. Ferdinand's face fills the screen-lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses electricity after 10 PM. Behind him, five boys sit cross-legged on concrete, waiting. "I fixed the weld myself," he says, turning the camera to show me the repair. "Tomorrow, I teach them." Three years ago, I would have walked away from that call. Told myself someone else would handle it. Someone more qualified. Someone who hadn't nearly failed Algebra 2. But failing taught me something no A ever could: the difference between knowing formulas and understanding why they matter. When I missed my school's Calculus AB cutoff by one point, my family couldn't afford appeals or test prep. My father works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. He comes home at 2 AM, heats up rice with hands still shaking from exhaustion, and asks about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue education beyond high school. But he made sure I could. So I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently. Not because I was naturally gifted-I wasn't. Because I refused to let a single point decide my future. Sitting in a classroom with adults, I learned derivatives by measuring bike chain velocity. Integrals by calculating area under drag curves. Physics became real when I held a wrench in my hand, not when I stared at equations on a whiteboard. I earned an A. Not because the material got easier, but because I finally understood what education means: making knowledge matter to someone who needs it. That realization changed everything. In 2023, I joined Stuybike teaching bicycle engineering to 157 Kenyan orphans. These kids didn't need bikes for recreation-they needed them to carry water five kilometers daily, reach school before dawn, avoid dangerous roads at night. A bike meant the difference between getting an education and staying trapped. I built an eight-unit curriculum translating torque, Faraday's Law, and materials science into concepts explainable through WhatsApp over unstable internet. Then our director approved incomplete bike designs-only my frame research existed-and left for Kenya for photo-ops. Kids kept asking when the bikes would arrive. I saw what was happening. Said nothing. When I finally spoke up, I was dismissed. Six months later, Stuybike collapsed. 157 students lost everything. That failure taught me: institutions fail. The question is whether you'll rebuild when they do. I reached out to the Kenyan administrator directly. Another former director and I bypassed the broken organization entirely-just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited myself, and a commitment to finish what we'd started. We called it 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. I rebuilt the curriculum. Designed three bikes for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Two bikes are production-ready. Twenty-three students show up weekly. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. Grace, 14, designed a water-jug carrier that I incorporated into our touring bike-now she teaches new students her design process. We launched a YouTube channel so lessons survive when internet fails. The program sustains itself. That's the test-does your education create more educators, or just dependents? The same principle drives my 400+ volunteer hours at Queens Community House teaching digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors. Twelve now video call their grandchildren independently. One teaches other residents. Engineering isn't about optimal solutions-it's about solutions that work for people who don't have other options. Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. Eight time zones apart, connected by education that neither of our fathers had access to. But here's the difference: when Ferdinand's bike breaks now, he doesn't wait for me. He fixes it himself, then teaches five other kids how to do the same. That's what education did for me. Not just opening doors-giving me tools to build doors for others. My goal is to become a STEM educator serving under-resourced communities where students learn through building. I work 15 hours weekly at a library to support my family while maintaining my 4Hope program and volunteer commitments. This scholarship would let me expand 4Hope's curriculum and develop the teaching methods I'll bring to classrooms. Students like Ferdinand-and like I was three years ago-don't need charity. They need educators who know that struggling doesn't mean incapable. Education gave me direction. Now I'm making sure the next kid who nearly fails Algebra 2 doesn't have to figure it out alone. Because that 2 AM call from Ferdinand? That's not him needing me. That's proof education works when it multiplies itself.

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone buzzes. WhatsApp call from Kenya - Ferdinand's face fills the screen, lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses power after 10 PM. Behind him, five younger boys sit cross-legged on the floor, waiting. "I taught them the brake repair," he says. "Like you showed me." That moment is why I want to study mechanical engineering. Not because it sounds impressive, but because it's the only field where I've watched knowledge actually change someone's life. Growing up in Queens, my father worked two jobs. There was no budget for tutoring, no family connections to college, no backup plan when things fell through. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. One afternoon, an 80-year-old man's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing for the computer. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." That stopped me cold. I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. That moment changed how I think about solving problems - and it's driven everything I've done since. That same mindset is behind 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, which I founded after the organization I was part of fell apart. We were teaching Kenyan orphans to build bicycles - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, stay safe at night. When leadership prioritized photo-ops over finishing the actual bike designs, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program shut down and 157 students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I went directly to the orphanages - no formal structure, just WhatsApp and volunteers. I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch: eight units on mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We designed three bikes built around Kenya's real constraints - unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger kids. We started a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when internet cuts out. Academically, I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. But once I started teaching physics through bike mechanics - torque through a chain, Faraday's Law through e-bike motors - it clicked. I went from nearly failing to earning an A in college-level Calculus 1, which I enrolled in independently after missing my high school's cutoff by one point. Struggling didn't mean I wasn't capable. It meant I needed someone to make the material matter - which is exactly what I try to do for my students now. My goal is to study mechanical engineering and go into design - specifically the kind of work where you're building systems for people who never get asked what they need. Water infrastructure. Low-cost energy. Transportation for places no one thinks about. Not perfect solutions. Real ones. Built around what people actually have. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that makes all of this harder - I work part-time hours just to keep up. But I want to be clear: I'm not waiting on this to keep going. I've already built a program from nothing, twice, with no funding and no institutional support. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. And when I do, it won't just be Ferdinand's orphanage that benefits. It'll be every community that engineers forgot to design for.

Growing up in Woodside, Queens as a first-generation student, I didn't have family connections to technology or engineering. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and 15 LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. I'm a Stuyvesant High School senior pursuing mechanical engineering, but my path has been defined by information technology. My mechanical engineering work is inseparable from IT-every challenge I've tackled required programming, data analysis, and computational systems thinking. WHAT INTERESTS ME ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY FIELD Technology excites me because it's the bridge between abstract problems and tangible solutions. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and GeoPandas to design disaster evacuation logistics-mapping supply truck routes across multiple cities during a simulated hurricane. The challenge wasn't just coding; it was using geospatial data analysis to answer: which communities get cut off first when roads flood? Where do we pre-position resources? This same computational thinking drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 Kenyan students bicycle engineering. I use Python to model aerodynamic drag equations, BikeCad for CAD prototyping, and Arduino for electric bike motor control. When Ferdinand calls at 2 AM from Kenya with a broken brake cable, I'm troubleshooting over WhatsApp-teaching him to fix problems with limited connectivity. This is why I'm pursuing computational engineering-where mechanical systems meet information technology. I want to build IT solutions serving underserved communities, combining software development, data analysis, and systems design. TECHNICAL IT EXPERIENCE Python Programming & Computational Modeling Through three years of HiMCM Mathematical Modeling competitions, I've built expertise in: Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP): Used Python's PuLP library to optimize firefighter sweep routes during emergency evacuations, reducing sweep time 15-20% while ensuring NFPA 1710 "two-in/two-out" safety compliance. The algorithm accounts for time-dependent hazards-smoke reduces movement speed from 1.3 m/s to 0.45 m/s, dynamically updating optimal paths. Graph Theory: Modeled buildings as networks using NetworkX, where nodes represent rooms and edges represent paths with time-dependent hazard weights Embedded Systems & Microcontrollers My electric bike design for Kenya uses Arduino microcontrollers for motor control and regenerative braking. I'm writing C++ code managing battery states, implementing PWM for speed control, and designing sensor integration for real-time monitoring. This bridges mechanical engineering with computer engineering-applying IT to solve transportation infrastructure problems. IT Education & Technical Support At Queens Community House (200+ volunteer hours), I taught digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors on equipment that constantly crashed. I troubleshoot hardware failures (loose RAM, CPU overheating), explain video calling through language barriers, and design lessons around unreliable technology. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. Technology became accessible through understanding their barriers and designing around them. WHY THIS MATTERS As an underrepresented minority from Queens, I've seen how technology access gaps compound inequality. Ferdinand in Kenya has the same intellectual capacity as any MIT student-he just lacks reliable internet and computational resources. My career goal is building IT solutions for communities overlooked by Silicon Valley: computational tools for low-bandwidth environments, educational platforms that work offline, systems designed for repair rather than replacement. Information technology is about solving real problems for real people. Whether optimizing evacuation routes with Python, programming Arduino systems for Kenyan students, or troubleshooting hardware for seniors in Queens, I'm using IT to expand access and create opportunity. As an underrepresented minority pursuing computational engineering, I want to build the next generation of IT solutions-tools designed for overlooked communities, systems that work despite constraints, technology that empowers rather than excludes.

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My phone buzzes. WhatsApp call from Kenya - Ferdinand's face fills the screen, lit by a single candle because the orphanage loses power after 10 PM. Behind him, five younger boys sit cross-legged on the floor, waiting. "I taught them the brake repair," he says. "Like you showed me." That moment is why I want to study mechanical engineering. Not because it sounds impressive, but because it's the only field where I've watched knowledge actually change someone's life. Growing up in Queens, my father worked two jobs. There was no budget for tutoring, no family connections to college, no backup plan when things fell through. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. One afternoon, an 80-year-old man's screen froze mid-call with his grandson. I kept apologizing for the computer. He stopped me: "I can see his face. That's all I need." That stopped me cold. I'd been trying to make the technology perfect. He just needed it to work. That moment changed how I think about solving problems - and it's driven everything I've done since. That same mindset is behind 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, which I founded after the organization I was part of fell apart. We were teaching Kenyan orphans to build bicycles - kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, stay safe at night. When leadership prioritized photo-ops over finishing the actual bike designs, I spoke up. I was dismissed. Six months later, the program shut down and 157 students lost everything. I didn't leave. Another former director and I went directly to the orphanages - no formal structure, just WhatsApp and volunteers. I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch: eight units on mechanics, physics, and materials engineering. We designed three bikes built around Kenya's real constraints - unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up every week now. Ferdinand teaches younger kids. We started a YouTube channel so lessons stay accessible when internet cuts out. Academically, I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. But once I started teaching physics through bike mechanics - torque through a chain, Faraday's Law through e-bike motors - it clicked. I went from nearly failing to earning an A in college-level Calculus 1, which I enrolled in independently after missing my high school's cutoff by one point. Struggling didn't mean I wasn't capable. It meant I needed someone to make the material matter - which is exactly what I try to do for my students now. My goal is to study mechanical engineering and go into design - specifically the kind of work where you're building systems for people who never get asked what they need. Water infrastructure. Low-cost energy. Transportation for places no one thinks about. Not perfect solutions. Real ones. Built around what people actually have. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that makes all of this harder - I work part-time hours just to keep up. But I want to be clear: I'm not waiting on this to keep going. I've already built a program from nothing, twice, with no funding and no institutional support. What this gives me is the ability to do it right - at scale, with the education behind it. And when I do, it won't just be Ferdinand's orphanage that benefits. It'll be every community that engineers forgot to design for.

I nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations on a whiteboard meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain in my hand, explaining torque to Ferdinand in Kenya over WhatsApp. The weight of the metal, how force transferred through each link-suddenly I understood what derivatives measured. Not as abstract symbols, but as the rate of change I could feel when I twisted that chain. That's when I discovered why I'm passionate about STEM: because it transforms abstract concepts into tools that solve real problems for real people. Growing up low-income in Queens as a first-generation student, I watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts plus weekend hotel work. He'd come home exhausted, heat up rice, ask about my homework. He never had the chance to pursue STEM education. But he made sure I could. When I nearly failed Algebra 2, we couldn't afford the tutoring my classmates had. When I missed my school's Calculus cutoff by one point, there was no test prep budget. I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently and taught myself about A-connecting derivatives to bike velocity, integrals to area under drag curves, optimization to real engineering constraints. That struggle revealed two truths that fuel my passion: STEM education should be accessible to everyone, and the best engineering solutions come from diverse perspectives-especially from people who understand constraints most programs never consider. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to design hurricane evacuation logistics. But the technical challenge wasn't what excited me most-it was the human question underneath: which communities get abandoned when disasters hit? That's STEM's power: computational thinking applied to social justice. This same principle drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 orphans bicycle engineering. These aren't recreational bikes-they're survival infrastructure for kids who need to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads. STEM gives me frameworks to ask better questions: not "what's the strongest material?" but "what's strongest for whom?" Not "what's the most efficient solution?" but "what's efficient within these constraints?" Two bikes are production-ready now. Ferdinand teaches five younger children every Tuesday. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water jug carrier modification that I incorporated into our touring bike design-now she presents her engineering process to new students. That's STEM education creating independence, not dependency. That's when I understood: STEM isn't about perfect solutions. It's about solutions that work for the people who actually need them. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. I'm passionate about STEM because it's the only field where intellectual rigor directly serves human needs. Physics isn't just equations-it's bikes that work on unpaved roads. Computer science isn't just algorithms-it's evacuation routes that save overlooked communities. Materials science isn't just properties-it's frames Ferdinand can repair himself. My passion comes from both dimensions: the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems and the moral imperative of making those solutions accessible. My father works two jobs so I can pursue STEM education. I'm pursuing it so students like Ferdinanand-like I was-have teachers who make physics click through hands-on demonstrations, who design curricula for students who learn differently, who believe everyone deserves problem-solving tools regardless of ZIP code. Because STEM transforms lives when made accessible. That's my passion. That's my purpose.

Growing up in Woodside, Queens as a BIPOC, first-generation, low-income student, I didn’t have family connections to engineering or technology. What I had was a donated laptop that crashed constantly at Queens Community House-and a group of LGBTQ+ seniors who needed help learning how to video call their grandchildren. That experience shaped both my career path and my purpose. I am a Stuyvesant High School senior pursuing mechanical engineering because I believe engineering should serve people who are most often excluded from technology. I am especially drawn to computational engineering, where mechanical systems intersect with programming, data analysis, and information technology. For me, engineering is not abstract-it is a tool to solve real problems in communities with limited resources. At MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and geospatial data to build evacuation models during a simulated hurricane. My work showed which neighborhoods-often low-income and underserved-would lose access first when roads flooded. That experience taught me that data and technology can either reinforce inequality or help prevent it, depending on who designs them and who they are designed for. That same mindset drives my work as founder of the 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach bicycle engineering to 23 students in Kenyan orphanages. I use computational modeling, CAD software, and Arduino microcontrollers to teach students how to design, build, and repair electric bicycles. When a student calls me late at night with a broken component, often over unreliable internet, I teach them how to troubleshoot it themselves. These bikes are not recreational-they are tools for carrying water, reaching school, and staying safe. I also volunteer over 400 hours at Queens Community House teaching digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors. I troubleshoot failing hardware, explain technology across language barriers, and redesign lessons around unreliable equipment. Today, twelve seniors can independently video call their families, and one now teaches other residents. Access changed not because the technology improved, but because someone took the time to make it understandable. As a BIPOC student pursuing engineering-a field where Black, Latino, and Indigenous engineers together make up less than 15% of the workforce-I understand how underrepresentation discourages participation long before students ever reach college. I have seen firsthand that lack of access, not lack of talent, is what keeps many students out of STEM. My goal is to change that. I plan to become both an engineer and an educator-teaching in under-resourced schools, mentoring students from backgrounds like mine, and building engineering programs that emphasize accessibility, repairability, and community impact. I want the next student fixing a broken laptop in a community center to see engineering not as something distant or exclusive, but as something they are already capable of doing. Engineering gave me a way to turn limitation into possibility. My goal is to leave the field more accessible than I found it-so students who come after me don’t need permission to belong.

At 2 a.m., my phone buzzes with a WhatsApp call from Kenya. Ferdinand’s face fills the screen, lit by a single candle-the orphanage loses electricity after 10 p.m. “I fixed the weld myself,” he says, grinning. He turns the camera to five younger boys sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching closely. “Tomorrow, I teach them what you taught me.” That moment is why I want to be a teacher. I’ve learned that the most powerful way to help people isn’t solving problems for them-it’s teaching them how to solve problems themselves, then watching them pass that knowledge on. Growing up in Queens as a low-income, first-generation student shaped how I serve others. My father worked two jobs, often coming home after 2 a.m., reheating rice with hands still shaking from exhaustion. We never had extra, but he taught me that lacking resources doesn’t mean lacking purpose. When I struggled in Algebra II sophomore year, my family couldn’t afford tutoring. When I missed my school’s Calculus AB cutoff by one point, there was no test prep or retake support. Instead, I enrolled independently in college calculus and taught myself to an A. That experience showed me that students don’t fail because they lack ability-they fail because they lack access. I became the teacher I needed but couldn’t afford. In 2023, I joined Stuybike as Research Director, teaching bicycle engineering to 157 Kenyan orphans. I built a curriculum covering physics and mechanics, translating concepts like torque and Faraday’s Law for students learning in a second language over unstable internet. These weren’t recreational bikes-they were tools for carrying water, reaching school, and staying safe. Teaching students to build and repair them meant teaching independence. When organizational mismanagement shifted focus away from students, I spoke up and was dismissed. Six months later, the program collapsed, and 157 students lost their education. I didn’t walk away. I founded the 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, an independent STEM initiative serving two orphanages. With no grants or institutional funding, I rebuilt the curriculum from scratch-eight units in mechanics, physics, materials engineering, and critical thinking-delivered through WhatsApp and volunteers I recruited myself. What I’m proudest of is how the program sustains itself. Ferdinand now leads weekly workshops for younger students. A 14-year-old named Grace designed a water-jug carrier we added to the curriculum, and she now teaches new students her design process. We created a YouTube channel so lessons remain accessible when internet access fails. Today, 23 students participate weekly, and six now teach independently. The same philosophy guides my 400+ volunteer hours at Queens Community House teaching digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors. Twelve can now video call their grandchildren independently. One now teaches other residents. Like Robert F. Lawson, who dedicated his life after service to helping others, I plan to spend my career empowering people through education. My goal is to become a STEM educator serving under-resourced communities-teaching in Title I schools and building hands-on programs that turn students into problem-solvers and teachers. I’m pursuing mechanical engineering because I learn and teach through building real solutions to real problems. I currently work 15 hours a week at a local library to help support my family. This scholarship would directly reduce my work hours, allowing me to expand 4Hope Kenya’s curriculum and mentor more students while completing my mechanical engineering education. Students like Ferdinand-and like I once was-deserve educators who know what it means to build something from nothing.

Growing up in Woodside, Queens as a first-generation student, I didn't have family connections to technology or engineering. What I had was a crashing donated laptop at Queens Community House and 15 LGBTQ+ seniors who needed to video call their grandchildren. I'm a Stuyvesant High School senior pursuing mechanical engineering, but my path has been defined by information technology. My mechanical engineering work is inseparable from IT-every challenge I've tackled required programming, data analysis, and computational systems thinking. WHAT INTERESTS ME ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY FIELD Technology excites me because it's the bridge between abstract problems and tangible solutions. At MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute, I used Python and GeoPandas to design disaster evacuation logistics-mapping supply truck routes across multiple cities during a simulated hurricane. The challenge wasn't just coding; it was using geospatial data analysis to answer: which communities get cut off first when roads flood? Where do we pre-position resources? This same computational thinking drives my 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program, where I teach 23 Kenyan students bicycle engineering. I use Python to model aerodynamic drag equations, BikeCad for CAD prototyping, and Arduino for electric bike motor control. When Ferdinand calls at 2 AM from Kenya with a broken brake cable, I'm troubleshooting over WhatsApp-teaching him to fix problems with limited connectivity. This is why I'm pursuing computational engineering-where mechanical systems meet information technology. I want to build IT solutions serving underserved communities, combining software development, data analysis, and systems design. TECHNICAL IT EXPERIENCE Python Programming & Computational Modeling Through three years of HiMCM Mathematical Modeling competitions, I've built expertise in: Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP): Used Python's PuLP library to optimize firefighter sweep routes during emergency evacuations, reducing sweep time 15-20% while ensuring NFPA 1710 "two-in/two-out" safety compliance. The algorithm accounts for time-dependent hazards-smoke reduces movement speed from 1.3 m/s to 0.45 m/s, dynamically updating optimal paths. Graph Theory: Modeled buildings as networks using NetworkX, where nodes represent rooms and edges represent paths with time-dependent hazard weights Embedded Systems & Microcontrollers My electric bike design for Kenya uses Arduino microcontrollers for motor control and regenerative braking. I'm writing C++ code managing battery states, implementing PWM for speed control, and designing sensor integration for real-time monitoring. This bridges mechanical engineering with computer engineering-applying IT to solve transportation infrastructure problems. IT Education & Technical Support At Queens Community House (200+ volunteer hours), I taught digital literacy to LGBTQ+ seniors on equipment that constantly crashed. I troubleshoot hardware failures (loose RAM, CPU overheating), explain video calling through language barriers, and design lessons around unreliable technology. Twelve seniors now independently video call their grandchildren. One teaches other residents. Technology became accessible through understanding their barriers and designing around them. WHY THIS MATTERS As an underrepresented minority from Queens, I've seen how technology access gaps compound inequality. Ferdinand in Kenya has the same intellectual capacity as any MIT student-he just lacks reliable internet and computational resources. My career goal is building IT solutions for communities overlooked by Silicon Valley: computational tools for low-bandwidth environments, educational platforms that work offline, systems designed for repair rather than replacement. Information technology is about solving real problems for real people. Whether optimizing evacuation routes with Python, programming Arduino systems for Kenyan students, or troubleshooting hardware for seniors in Queens, I'm using IT to expand access and create opportunity. As an underrepresented minority pursuing computational engineering, I want to build the next generation of IT solutions-tools designed for overlooked communities, systems that work despite constraints, technology that empowers rather than excludes.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine works for so much less?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes the inequality make sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy from my father. He works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. Up again at 6 AM. My father never taught me leadership through speeches. He taught me through showing up at 2 AM for two decades. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up anyway. That's the leadership model I'm building: consistent, unglamorous action that serves real needs. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the industry I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed after I discovered funds meant for orphans were redirected to promotional activities, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, limited budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. This is how I give back now: twenty-three students learning weekly, Ferdinand teaching younger children, students presenting their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. At Queens Community House, I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors-not because it looks good on applications, but because my father showed me that showing up is what matters. But 4Hope taught me something bigger: sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone involved. That's the legacy I'm building as a first-generation student: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. I'm developing this business model through market research on manufacturing costs, partnerships with Nairobi fabricators, and direct feedback from the students I serve. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating local jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. "Good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. The company I'm building will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have equipment that works. Products they can fix. Solutions designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

The bird was dying on Roosevelt Avenue. A kid hovered over it, trying to help. His mother filmed on her phone. The bird's wing dragged across concrete, broken. A year ago, I would have kept walking. "I'll take care of it," I told them. No hesitation this time. I called vets until one answered-they could take it tomorrow morning. A waiter from the Thai restaurant offered to keep it overnight in a box. The next morning, I cut windows in a shoebox for airflow, lined it with tissue, used my old shirt as a cover, and delivered the bird myself. It wasn't about the bird. It was about who I'd become since failing 157 students in Kenya. At Stuybike, I'd been Research Director teaching Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads at night. I designed a curriculum on bicycle physics while other teams handled wheels, gears, brakes. Then our director approved an incomplete design-only my frame research existed-and left for Kenya for photo ops. Kids kept asking over video calls when the bikes would come. I saw it happening. Said nothing. I told myself: don't make waves. Keep your head down. That's what gets results. Growing up in a parent household in Queens NY, I'd watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. He came home exhausted, heated up rice, asked about my AP Pre-Calculus homework. Never complained. Never asked for help. Just showed up. When I missed Stuyvesant's Calculus cutoff by one point and we couldn't afford alternatives, he didn't fight the school. He said, "You'll find another way." So I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently. I thought that was his lesson: work around problems quietly. Accept broken systems. Stay silent. When I finally raised concerns, I was dismissed. Six months later, Stuybike collapsed. 157 students lost everything. Kenyan kids who'd shown up weekly, trusted us-gone. Watching that program fall apart, made me finally understand what I'd been missing about my father. He wasn't teaching me silence. He was showing me to ACT even when systems fail you. Those two jobs? That's action. Showing up exhausted? That's action. Working around obstacles when you can't fight head-on? That's not silence-that's strategy. He never quit when things got hard. Bills don't pause because systems are broken. You show up anyway. So I did. I contacted the Kenyan administrator directly. Another former director and I bypassed Stuybike-just WhatsApp and volunteers. Rebuilt the curriculum: eight units on mechanics, physics, materials. Designed three bikes for $200 budgets and unpaved roads. Started a YouTube channel for when internet fails. Twenty-three students show up weekly now. Ferdinand, one of the first, teaches younger kids. At 2 AM on a Tuesday, he called-his brake cable was stuck. I talked him through fixing it. Behind him, five younger students waited for him to teach them. That's when I knew it worked. And that's why, three months later, I didn't walk past the injured bird. At Stuybike, I misunderstood my father's lesson and stayed silent too long-I could only rebuild from wreckage. With Ferdinand and 4Hope, I understood: show up, act, build solutions. With the bird, I didn't even question it. My father wasn't teaching me silence. He was teaching me that real resilience means acting when systems fail you, even when you're exhausted, even when it's easier to walk away. I'd finally learned his actual lesson. Now I show up. For Ferdinand's 2 AM calls. For injured birds on Roosevelt Avenue. For the next challenge. That's my father's resilience. And now it's mine.

2 AM. My phone lights up. WhatsApp from Kenya. Ferdinand's face fills the screen. Behind him, darkness-the orphanage has no electricity after 10 PM. He's holding a bike frame by candlelight. "The weld cracked. I fixed it. Like you taught me." He turns the frame so I can see the repair. It's rough but functional. Exactly what it needs to be. "Good. Can you teach the others tomorrow?" "Yes. But..." He hesitates. "Why do American bikes cost $2,000 when mine needs to cost $200?" I don't have a good answer. Not one that makes sense. Because that's the question that exposes everything broken about how engineering serves the world. Growing up in Queens, I learned about the 2 AM economy. My father works two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. I've watched him come home exhausted at 2 AM, heat up rice, ask about my homework. The next day, he's up at 6 AM to do it again. Bills don't wait. Rent doesn't pause. You show up. Ferdinand lives in the same economy. His bike isn't recreation-it's survival infrastructure. Water collection. School access. Avoiding dangerous roads at night. If it breaks and he can't fix it, he's stranded. But the global engineering industry doesn't design for Ferdinand. It designs for people who can afford to replace things when they break. That's the business I'm going to change. In 2023, when Stuybike-a program teaching 157 Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-collapsed due to organizational fraud, I had a choice: accept that these systems fail people like Ferdinand, or build something that actually works. I built 4Hope Kenya Mentorship Program. No institutional funding. No formal structure. Just WhatsApp, volunteers I recruited, and a commitment to serve the communities we claimed to help. I designed an eight-unit curriculum covering mechanics, physics, materials engineering. We created three bike designs specifically for Kenya's constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. Twenty-three students show up weekly. Ferdinand teaches younger children now. Students present their own innovations. We launched a YouTube channel so knowledge remains accessible when internet fails. 4Hope taught me that sustainable impact requires entrepreneurial thinking. Not charity-business models that create value for everyone. That's my legacy: a social enterprise designing affordable engineering products for underserved communities. My company will start with bicycles but scale to essential equipment: water pumps, solar systems, agricultural tools. The model: design for real constraints, manufacture through in-country partnerships creating jobs, distribute through community networks building trust. At Queens Community House, where I've volunteered 400+ hours teaching technology to LGBTQ+ seniors, an 80-year-old man stopped my apologies about a crashing laptop: "I can see my grandson's face. That's all I need." That's the insight driving my entrepreneurship: "good enough for the person who actually needs it" beats "perfect for the person who can afford anything." Ferdinand calls at 2 AM because that's when his day ends and mine begins. Someday, the company I build will ensure kids like him don't need to wait for someone eight time zones away. They'll have bikes that work. Equipment they can fix. Products designed for their reality, not ours. That's not charity. That's business. And that's how I shine my light-by engineering for the 2 AM economy, where people like my father and Ferdinand live. Because they deserve solutions that work on their terms, not ours.

The bird was dying on Roosevelt Avenue. A kid hovered over it, trying to help. His mother filmed on her phone. The bird's wing dragged across concrete, broken. A year ago, I would have kept walking. "I'll take care of it," I told them. No hesitation this time. I called vets until one answered-they could take it tomorrow morning. A waiter from the Thai restaurant offered to keep it overnight in a box. The next morning, I cut windows in a shoebox for airflow, lined it with tissue, used my old shirt as a cover, and delivered the bird myself. It wasn't about the bird. It was about who I'd become since failing 157 students in Kenya. At Stuybike, I'd been Research Director teaching Kenyan orphans bicycle engineering-kids who needed bikes to carry water, reach school, avoid dangerous roads at night. I designed a curriculum on bicycle physics while other teams handled wheels, gears, brakes. Then our director approved an incomplete design-only my frame research existed-and left for Kenya for photo ops. Kids kept asking over video calls when the bikes would come. I saw it happening. Said nothing. I told myself: don't make waves. Keep your head down. That's what gets results. Growing up in a single-parent household in Queens NY, I'd watched my father work two jobs-weekday shifts, then weekend hotel work at Howard 11. He came home exhausted, heated up rice, asked about my AP Pre-Calculus homework. Never complained. Never asked for help. Just showed up. When I missed Stuyvesant's Calculus cutoff by one point and we couldn't afford alternatives, he didn't fight the school. He said, "You'll find another way." So I enrolled myself in college Calculus independently. I thought that was his lesson: work around problems quietly. Accept broken systems. Stay silent. When I finally raised concerns, I was dismissed. Six months later, Stuybike collapsed. 157 students lost everything. Kenyan kids who'd shown up weekly, trusted us-gone. Watching that program fall apart, made me finally understand what I'd been missing about my father. He wasn't teaching me silence. He was showing me to ACT even when systems fail you. Those two jobs? That's action. Showing up exhausted? That's action. Working around obstacles when you can't fight head-on? That's not silence-that's strategy. He never quit when things got hard. Bills don't pause because systems are broken. You show up anyway. So I did. I contacted the Kenyan administrator directly. Another former director and I bypassed Stuybike-just WhatsApp and volunteers. Rebuilt the curriculum: eight units on mechanics, physics, materials. Designed three bikes for $200 budgets and unpaved roads. Started a YouTube channel for when internet fails. Twenty-three students show up weekly now. Ferdinand, one of the first, teaches younger kids. At 2 AM on a Tuesday, he called-his brake cable was stuck. I talked him through fixing it. Behind him, five younger students waited for him to teach them. That's when I knew it worked. And that's why, three months later, I didn't walk past the injured bird. At Stuybike, I misunderstood my father's lesson and stayed silent too long-I could only rebuild from wreckage. With Ferdinand and 4Hope, I understood: show up, act, build solutions. With the bird, I didn't even question it. My father wasn't teaching me silence. He was teaching me that real resilience means acting when systems fail you, even when you're exhausted, even when it's easier to walk away. I'd finally learned his actual lesson. Now I show up. For Ferdinand's 2 AM calls. For injured birds on Roosevelt Avenue. For the next challenge. That's my father's resilience. And now it's mine.

When Stuybike collapsed after organizational fraud, 157 students walked away. But 23 Kenyan orphans remained - kids who'd been showing up weekly, asking about gear ratios, trusting we'd help them build bikes. These weren't bikes for recreation. They needed bikes to carry water, reach school, and avoid dangerous roads at night. I couldn't just walk away. I created 4Hope to teach these students directly. But I had no money, no official structure, and spotty internet to work with. I had to get creative with every single obstacle. First problem: We needed a platform, but I couldn't afford video conferencing software. Solution: WhatsApp. Every student already had it, it worked on low bandwidth, and it was free. When the internet cut out during live sessions - which happened constantly - I recorded lessons and posted them on YouTube so students could watch offline. Second problem: We needed bike blueprints designed for Kenya, not America. I reached out to the Kenyan administrator, recruited volunteers across time zones, and we designed three bikes specifically for Kenya's terrain: unpaved roads, $200 budgets using parts available in Nairobi, repairable with basic tools. I used Google Slides for lessons, Google Docs for collaboration, and CAD software for bike designs - all free tools I learned to use because I had to. Third problem: Teaching physics over spotty WhatsApp calls. I broke down complex concepts like Faraday's Law and drag equations into explanations that worked with limited English and frequent disconnections. When explaining torque, I'd hold up a bike chain to my camera. When teaching about dynamos, I'd use whatever I could find in my room to demonstrate. The impact: 23 students now learn bike mechanics, physics, and materials engineering weekly. Ferdinand, one of my first students, now teaches younger kids at his orphanage. Two bikes are production-ready - the mountain and touring bikes. Students design their own innovations and present them to each other. The YouTube channel means lessons are accessible even when the internet fails. The biggest problem with 4Hope right now is funding for materials. Building bikes remotely is incredibly difficult when we can't afford the parts students need. If I had the resources, I would buy materials like aluminum frames, tires, gears, and brake cables - everything needed to actually construct these bikes in Kenya. I would hire local mechanics in Kenya who could both teach the physics we cover and actually help students build the bikes hands-on. Right now, I'm teaching over WhatsApp, but students can't practice building because they don't have parts. A physical workshop with tools and materials would change everything. This would allow us to scale the program across Kenya. Instead of 23 students working on 2 bikes, we could reach 50 students building 50 bikes - bikes that actually get used, that students built themselves, that they know how to repair. That's the dream: 50 Kenyan students who don't just understand bike mechanics theoretically, but who've built their own bikes and can teach others to do the same. Creative problem-solving isn't just building bikes with limited resources - it's building a system where students become teachers, and solutions outlast the person who started them.

At 2 AM, Ferdinand called from Kenya. His brake cable was jammed, and he needed the bike at sunrise to fetch water for his orphanage. As I guided him through the repair over crackling WhatsApp, I realized something: I was doing remote troubleshooting across eight time zones with limited communication-the exact challenge aerospace engineers face with spacecraft millions of miles away. That's when aviation stopped being abstract and became inevitable. I'm a first-generation student who nearly failed Algebra 2 because abstract equations meant nothing to me. Then I held a bike chain explaining torque to Ferdinand, and suddenly physics clicked. I don't learn from textbooks first-I learn when something isn't working and someone needs me to fix it. That's exactly what draws me to aviation: the field where every system must work flawlessly because lives depend on it. When the bike program I'd joined-Stuybike-collapsed after I reported financial misconduct, 157 students walked away. I didn't. I rebuilt independently as 4Hope, teaching twenty-three Kenyan students bike mechanics and physics over WhatsApp. I designed three bikes specifically for their constraints: unpaved roads, $200 budgets, parts they could source in Nairobi and repair themselves. Aviation demands the same thinking: designing for extreme constraints. Limited fuel. Harsh environments. No room for failure. When I specify aluminum 6061 for Ferdinand's frame because it's weldable with basic tools and resists corrosion, I'm applying the same materials engineering principles Boeing uses for aircraft structures. When I troubleshoot brake systems remotely with spotty internet, I'm practicing the diagnostic thinking flight engineers use. But what truly calls me to aviation is this: aircraft connect people who can't reach each other any other way. Ferdinand's bike carries water. Aircraft carry medicine to remote communities, connect families across oceans, enable disaster response when roads fail. Aviation is infrastructure that transcends geography-and underserved communities need that infrastructure most. At MIT Beaverworks' Remote Sensing Disaster Response Course, my team optimized hurricane supply logistics-relocating trucks across multiple cities using operations research and coding. We navigated timing, routes, resource allocation. But I kept thinking: trucks are limited by roads. Aircraft aren't. Aviation expands what's possible when ground infrastructure fails. I've applied to NASA's PolyCubeSat program and Dr. Yu's aerospace lab at CCNY-ambitious for a high school student, but I've learned not to let institutional barriers define my path. When I missed my school's Calculus AB cutoff by one point, I took Calculus 1 independently at community college and earned "A". This scholarship would transform my trajectory. As a low-income student supporting my family, I've balanced 400+ volunteer hours at Queens Community House and Poetshouse Library with academics and my Kenya program. Financial pressure means choosing between continuing my mentorship work and taking additional jobs. This scholarship would let me focus on engineering preparation-taking advanced coursework, joining aerospace research opportunities, building the technical foundation I need. More importantly, it would prove something to Ferdinand and the twenty-three students who show up every week: that someone who started by nearly failing Algebra 2 can reach aviation engineering. That first-generation students belong in aerospace. That the kid troubleshooting brake cables at 2 AM has a place designing the systems that connect our world. I'm called to aviation because it's where engineering meets the people who need it most-where STEM becomes the infrastructure that ensures no community gets left behind. This scholarship isn't just funding my education. It's investing in the engineer who'll ask not "what's the most advanced design?" but "who needs this to work, and how do I ensure it reaches them?" Ferdinand still rides that bike. I want to build the systems that reach him next.