ScholarsPH Blog #1: Our First Scholar, Myke

@scholarsph aims to uplift the Philippine community through education - one youth at a time. The group will support tertiary-level or collegiate students by providing funds for their school fees and allowance.

Get to know how the program started by reading our introductory post.

The Founding Team

The project is founded by a group of authors at @tagalogtrail's discord server, and helmed by the three main curators of the group. @chinitacharmer will be our key person in facilitating updates and funds application. She's the primary teacher and adviser of the first chosen beneficiary and has been teaching in Tagum National Trade School for over two years, with 10 years' professional experience in the education sector.

Meet Myke, Our First Scholar

Name: Myke Isidore A. Tabugoc
Nickname: Myke
Course: Hotel and Restaurant Servicing major in Food Processing
School Year: 2018-2019
Address: Davao del Norte City, Philippines
Birthday: May 20, 1993
Age: 25

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Myke is both deaf and mute

Aside from the challenges he faces in learning and communication gap among peers and teachers, he and his family also struggles financially. His mother has passed away and his father works hard as a vendor to make ends meet. Despite the difficult circumstances, he has demonstrated an earnest drive to learn and leverage his practical skills for a stable and rewarding career in the future.

For all the reasons above, we felt he is the perfect first beneficiary among the group of differently-abled learners in Tagum's Trade School.

An Overview of the Trade Program

Hotel and Restaurant Servicing program enables each student to learn cookery skills and several other academic subjects. The differently-abled students learn alongside regular students. And their teachers who do not have any background in sign language are assisted by "shadow teachers" (sign language interpreters).

_{Some of the deaf and mute students during a practical lesson with their teachers}

Funding Allocation

@scholarsph plans to fund the student's school fees at the start of the school year and/or monthly expenses throughout the program. Myke has already started the school year and his initial fees were already paid for and thus, we're only targeting giving him a sufficient amount to cover his monthly learning spending.

Basic Estimated Expenses (10-month school year)

Item	Estimated Cost (USD)
Food Ingredients for Monthly Practice	$60
Chef Uniform & Modules	$20
Assessment & Certification Fees	$20
School Organization Fees	$20
School Projects Allowance	$60
Student's Personal Allowance	$40
Total	$220

Future Goals

If community support exceeds our expected targets for Myke's expenses, the group plans to expand the scholarship program by providing monthly stipends to more differently-abled students in Tagum's Trade School.

We're also considering opening up support to active Steemit users in the Philippines who are currently studying in tertiary or collegiate level and in need of financial assistance.

Backer Rewards

We are extremely grateful to all of those who supported us by upvoting and resteeming our intro post. We know there'll be several others who would join our advocacy in Steemit and in the @fundition platform. As a token of our gratitude, we'll include your Steemit usernames in our heart cloud, that will be present in all @scholarsph's upcoming post. The current cloud represents all users who have upvoted our previous introduction post.

For those backers who would give an accumulated upvote or donations amounting to 20 STEEM or more, @scholarsph will award those supporters a once-a-day direct upvote in your posts using SteemAuto.com. The upvote won't be a significant value since the account holds little Steem Power, but each token upvote contains our deep gratitude for helping us achieve our vision.

Thank you and Mabuhay!

This post was written by @jazzhero with materials and information from @chinitacharmer. You can view our official Fundition project page on the Fundition site:

Support this project on Fundition.io