‘Million Dollar $cholar’ looking for sponsors

Gerard van Gils

Kagman High School’s “Million Dollar $cholar” program is looking for sponsors that can help raise funds for 20 students to attend college off island.

Speaking before the business community, KHS teacher Gerard van Gils shared his students’ need with regards to attending college.

“The challenge with scholarships is you have to actually arrive at college before you can claim scholarships that are being awarded to you,” van Gils said.

The club’s goal is to raise $1 million in scholarship funds for their first generation of “Million Dollar $cholars.”

“Our goal is to raise funds for flights, clothing, stuff for their dorms, to enable them to make that first step to college,” he added.

According to van Gils, about half of the KHS’ students are living below the poverty line.

Identifying the top 25 of their graduating class and those who wanted to go off-island for higher education, the club to help the group of students to go to college was formed.

“Of our 20 ‘Million Dollar $cholars,’ 19 are below the poverty line,” van Gils said.

He added that they want to make their students career-and-college ready and this is one way to help them.

“The Million Dollar $cholar program is an opportunity for our students to raise awareness for higher education,” van Gils said.

During his talk, van Gils presented one of his students, Jessa Camacho.

Camacho, he said, has been accepted to five different universities so far and has been offered more than $70,000 in scholarships.

Camacho read to the audience a part of an essay she wrote for her Gates Millenium Scholarship application, on which she shared her personal experience inside their tin house during Typhoon Soudelor.

“Day one of school, the teacher hands me a school supply list, as though my parents would choose to buy me paper notebooks instead of roofing nails. Kids in concrete houses showed up in new school clothes, I came to school wearing the only clothes that didn’t fly away in the storm. School starts in the dark, with no Internet, and I’m expected to turn in scholarship applications and write essays as though I have the same advantages of kids my age attending prep schools in the United States. My teacher tells me to write something true, show how smart I am, and convince you that I am college-ready. I can do that,” her essay says.

“Something true: I never again want to be inside a house as it is being demolished.

Something smart: Education and money are twin sisters. The poor will never have an equal starting point as the rich and my intelligence is not in question.

I am college ready: I’ve lived through the calm, disease, of the eye of a typhoon. Living in a dorm doesn’t scare me,” it added.

Camacho’s essay and 19 other students’ will be part of a book that they will publish as part of the fundraiser.

“We’ve written a book, and this is a book of my students’ college essays. It’s called ‘Reflections of Survival and Scholarship.’ These students have survived a massive typhoon and even more difficult, they’ve survived poverty. We’re going to sell this book in a few weeks,” van Gils said.

“Right now we’re looking for corporate sponsors to pay for the printing of the book and also support our students as they go off to college,” he added.

Those who would like to support can contact van Gils through KHS and donate to their account at gofundme.com.

Van Gils said they were able to send one student last year to college. Aside from raising funds for 20 students this year, they are also already working on the juniors to prepare them.