One of the goals of Global Partners in Life is to provide for the education of students in China, especially those that are facing challenges. Global Partners in Life worked closely with the university where I taught in China and developed a scholarship program. The criteria for a candidate were to be from a financially challenged family, have excellent grades, and be an English major.
The university was fantastic about helping GPiL identify and select the best of these candidates! I feel very fortunate to have met them and learn their stories.
The two scholarship recipients I probably got to know the best are in the picture. One of them came from a family of farmers. They had a drought the previous year, so they didn’t have much produce to sell, so it was difficult for them to keep their son enrolled. The other student came from a broken family. His father left a few days after he was born, and him mom had a very low wage job in a factory, so it was hard for him to be in college also.
The picture shows some of the other candidates, and I assume their being there was to perhaps motivate them to study a little harder. The banner says my name, but the contribution was from Global Partners in Life and not from me. The university knows me, and there aren’t too many non-profits they have built relationships with, so they used my name.
I am very thankful GPiL has been able to assist these students and other students to remain in college. One of these young men wanted to continue his education and go to grad school and become an English teacher! I admire someone with lofty goals like that when I know the lack of resources they have!