{"id":1536,"date":"2017-06-02T17:24:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-03T00:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vccf.org\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2025-01-29T07:48:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T07:48:45","slug":"how-scholar-makes-a-difference-in-others-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/how-scholar-makes-a-difference-in-others-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"\u5968\u5b66\u751f\u304c\u4ed6\u4eba\u306e\u4eba\u751f\u306b\u3069\u306e\u3088\u3046\u306a\u5909\u5316\u3092\u3082\u305f\u3089\u3059\u304b"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out the full story on\u00a0the VC\u30b9\u30bf\u30fc\u306e\u30a6\u30a7\u30d6\u30b5\u30a4\u30c8<\/a>\u00a0for more photos and videos<\/em><\/p>\n

Brian Nguyen is a self-described science and math guy, so the 18-year-old Rio Mesa High School student was shocked Thursday to find out he\u2019d been selected for a $5,000 college scholarship based on an essay.<\/div>\n

At an awards ceremony hosted by the Ventura County Community Foundation, Nguyen discovered he was not only one of 93 high school students selected as a Ventura County Star Scholar this year, but he was also sole recipient\u00a0of the 2017 Julius Gius Star Scholarship. That award, named for the editor of the Ventura County Star-Free Press from 1960 to 1988, goes to the top-scoring essay writer among Star Scholar contestants.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, I think my essays aren\u2019t too great in general, but I guess they saw something in this one,\u201d said Nguyen, beaming after he found out about the award. \u201cI\u2019m a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) guy. I\u2019m going into mechanical engineering. So to win something with an essay, I\u2019m pretty proud of myself right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the past two years, he has led a Rio Mesa-based student organization called First Chapter that distributes free books and school supplies to needy students throughout the county and beyond. Under Nguyen\u2019s direction, First Chapter expanded from a student club into an officially recognized nonprofit. He estimated the group has distributed more than 25,000 books since it started.<\/p>\n

Nguyen said he was inspired to join and eventually lead the group because he saw many students at his school struggling to buy basic academic supplies. Coming from a single-parent, low-income family, he understood the hardships students with such a background face, he said. Luckily, his own mother emphasized academic success and made every effort to provide for him, but he wanted to help other students who weren\u2019t so fortunate, he said.<\/p>\n

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Since taking the helm of First Chapter, Nguyen has spent countless hours working to get it nonprofit status\u00a0and figuring out how to obtain more donated supplies and distribute them to more students. He and other students with First Chapter have delivered supplies to elementary schools throughout the county, and even to impoverished families in Thailand, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt teaches you to be almost humble and gives you a sense of where you belong in the community,\u201d he said. \u201cI think to help out other students who might not be receiving the exact same amount of support with books and everything, if they can\u2019t afford those things, I think it\u2019s our responsibility to help prop those students up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nguyen will head to Stanford University in the fall to study mechanical engineering. His dream is to become an astronaut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty ecstatic,\u201d he said of the scholarship. \u201cYou can\u2019t go wrong with $5,000. It\u2019s going to help with my college.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other Star Scholars each receive several hundred dollars from the Ventura County Community Foundation. All are nominated for the award by their high schools and are judged by a panel from The Star.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s event also recognized the recipients of more than 400 other scholarships administered by the foundation and worth a total of more than $1 million. The scholarships, funded by donors in the community, are awarded to high school, college and adult students pursuing learning in a variety of fields.<\/p>\n

Among them was Juan Perez, a senior at Santa Paula High School\u00a0who received three scholarships together worth more than $5,000. Perez, who will attend UCLA, said he\u2019s the first person in his family to attend a four-year university and he hopes to go into medicine. Perez said it wouldn\u2019t have been possible for him to attend college without the scholarships.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m really pumped,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanessa Bechtel, president and CEO of the Ventura County Community Foundation, said students who receive the awards go through a rigorous selection process. This year\u2019s scholars were selected from among thousands of applicants, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese students are the cream of the crop,” she said. “They are the best of the best.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out the full story on\u00a0the VC Star website\u00a0for more photos and videos Brian Nguyen is a self-described science and math guy, so the 18-year-old Rio Mesa High School student…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-coverage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}