American Immigrants Make Waves With Education Foundations

November 21, 2007

American Immigrants Make Waves With Education Foundations

Two former refugees are working together to form a foundation that will bring people who live in refugee camps to American universities, reports Newsweek.

Lorna Solis, director of Latin America and Africa at Institutional Investor magazine, is working with Abass Hassan Mohamed, whose family escaped war-torn Somalia when he was 10 years old, to form the Rose Trust Foundation. Ms. Solis’s family fled violence in Nicaragua to the United States in 1979 when she was 10 years old.

Ms. Solis, who earned a master’s degree in tropical conservation and development from the University of Florida, in Gainesville, hopes the foundation can emulate the work of the World University Services of Canada, which offers refugees from camps around the world the opportunity to attend Canadian universities.

Other immigrants are also making education a key priority for their philanthropy.

Catalino Tapia, for example, who arrived in the United States 40 years ago and built up his own gardening business, sent his children to college and then decided he wanted to help other immigrants who lived near his home in Redwood City, Calif.

National Public Radio reports that on the suggestion of his son, Mr. Tapia created the Bay Area Gardeners Foundation and has raised $75,000 to date from local residents as well as from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Mr. Tapia’s foundation began giving $1,500 scholarships in 2006 and made it a policy not to distinguish between documented and undocumented scholarship applicants. Four out of its nine scholarship recipients are undocumented.

Tammie Pereira, an insurance agent and board member of the Gardeners Foundation, says the board was in agreement that “no matter what, they’re going to have their education. So even though they don’t have their papers and even though they might not be able to get a job with their Social Security number, no one will be able to take away their education.”

Comments

These are really good and productive efforts which can be very helpful to immigrants. Education is the foundation of a good futures.

— Erlinda Nov 21, 05:54 PM #

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