Check out this month’s edition of our recurring feature, Worldfund’s Student of the Month. Worldfund is our Latin American non-profit literacy partner and we look to support them in any way we can as they support youths such as:
Bruno!
Seventeen-year-old Bruno was born and raised in Salvador, Bahia, where he lives with his mother, a domestic worker, and his two younger sisters.
Bruno has always liked electronics and is working towards becoming an engineer. When he was 14, he was accepted into the Steve Biko Institute’s three-year, intensive after-school Oguntec Program, which prepares disadvantaged Afro-Brazilian students for the vestibular (university entrance exam). Last year, at age 16, Bruno took his first exam for admission to the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and passed the first phase for Electrical Engineering. Bruno graduated from high school in December 2007 and hopes to begin his university studies in 2008.
Bruno believes that his participation in the Oguntec Program was the best thing that ever happened to him. It was as a student in this program that he learned that the word “quit” is not part of his vocabulary. He also learned that for a young man from a poor neighborhood, completing high school is not enough. He needs to dream of attending university. Bruno’s goals include attending university, establishing a career, and changing the economic situation of his family.
As Bruno states, “Attending university will make me the first, the first child, the first grandson, the first nephew in one generation to believe in the DREAM. Afterwards, I would like to return the Steve Biko Institute and become a professor in the Oguntec Program which I believe should always continue. It was at the Institute that I learned to have a social commitment.”
