Awarding scholarships is YouthQuest’s primary means of helping at-risk youth pursue job training or higher education after they complete our 3D ThinkLink class.
Twenty-two graduates of National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Programs have earned a total of $12,500 in scholarships since 2013 for essays they wrote about our training’s impact on their lives.
The latest winners are Sthephanie Alvarez-Vega from Maryland’s Freestate ChalleNGe Academy, Caleb Pearson from South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe Academy and Chigaru Todd from the District of Columbia’s Capital Guardian Youth ChalleNGe Academy. Each of them earned $1,000 to use for their continued education. All three were honored at ceremonies in mid-December at the end of their 22-week class cycle.
New York Times bestselling novelist John Gilstrap, author of the acclaimed Jonathan Grave thriller series, is the contest judge. He said he was pleased by the increase in the quality and quantity of the essays in this round of competition.
This was the first class cycle since John took part in an all-day meeting with the YouthQuest staff during the summer to discuss improving the results of the scholarship contest. It was part of the application process for the Drucker Prize, an award named for management expert Peter Drucker that recognizes innovation by nonprofit organizations.
Using the Drucker Institute’s resources, we took steps aimed at generating more high-quality essays including; telling cadets about the scholarship opportunity earlier in the class cycle, doubling the prize amount from $500 to $1,000, and providing clearer guidance for students and teachers.
John recorded some short videos to give students advice about writing their essays. He urged them not to turn in a laundry list of the cool things they made and saw.
“What I want to read about is how the 3D ThinkLink experience has affected your life,” he told them, “what it’s taught you about success and failure.”
‘My Path in Life Is Not Ultimately Decided by My Mistakes’
When Caleb Pearson first heard about 3D printing a few years ago, he assumed that it required “genius level skills in mathematics.” Caleb, who said he was never very good at math, was pleased to discover that he was able to create a 3D object after just three lessons in our class at South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe Academy.
Caleb explained in his scholarship-winning essay that our training also taught him a larger lesson.
“The key phrase during the class: mistakes are not final, nothing is so bad that you can’t come back from it,” he wrote. “I know I’ve learned that my path in life is not ultimately decided by my mistakes and that I am still working on a few that I’ve made. I know that I will still make more of them in future, hopefully not too many, and I’ll learn from those, too.”
“Right now I’m happy with the doors I’ve opened,” added Caleb, who hopes those open doors will lead to a career in engineering. He said his Vocational Orientation visit to the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in October “really solidified my resolve to pursue that career path.”
In his essay – and in this video recorded during Immersion Lab Week in November – Caleb recalled meeting Nathan Lambert, a graduate research assistant who helped lead the tour at UNCC. Like Caleb, Nathan said he struggled with math in high school and, in fact, he barely graduated. But his determination to become an engineer after six years in the military drove him to eventually become a top grad student in his department.
That was something “I could really relate to but had never heard before,” Caleb wrote.
Hearing Nathan’s story “lifted my spirits about my future in the engineering field,” he said.
‘I No Longer See Things With a Simple Mind’
Sthephanie Alvarez-Vega’s 3D ThinkLink experience didn’t start as well as Caleb’s did.
“At first I wasn’t sure if I had made the right choice” by picking 3D instead of the welding program at Freestate, she wrote.
“I was kind of disappointed in the first 3D printing class because it was boring and nothing seemed to catch my attention and I wanted to drop out of the class as soon as possible!” Sthephanie recalled.
Her thinking turned around when the Freestate class visited The Foundery, an industrial makerspace in Baltimore, for Vocational Orientation.
While the cadets were looking at the many kinds of machines Foundery members can use, Sthephanie met Festus Jones III, a local craftsman who was working on laser-engraving projects. She asked him what he was doing, and he spent lots of time explaining how he creates elaborate designs and etches them into mirrors with a laser to make things like lighted signs for storefronts. He encouraged her to be confident in her artistic skills and learn the technical skills to create products she can sell.
“This made me change my perspective and made me realize how cool and unique things can be when you learn to build things on your own and you get a feeling of satisfaction when doing it,” said Sthephanie. She also talked about her “lightbulb moment” in this video from November Immersion Lab.
Looking back on her time in our class, Sthephanie said she appreciates how 3D printing lets her use her imagination and “think freely”
“I now realize that I made a great choice to stay with 3D printing because it got me to see the world and what revolves around me differently,” Sthephanie wrote. “I no longer see things with a simple mind.”
“One of my ultimate life goals is to be able to help my father financially by becoming self-sufficient,” wrote Capital Guardian’s Chigaru Todd, who grew up without a mom. “I watched him struggle to raise me as a young female. I believe that everything I do is in honor of my father.”
Chigaru described being “intrigued” by Moment of Inspiration 3D design software and feeling “empowered” after completing the first project in class, a personalized keychain tag.
“I plan to take the skills I learned from 3D printing and utilize them in my personal life,” Chigaru continued. “I hope to design personalized 3D print items that will provide another stream of income as an entrepreneur.”
A New Dimension in Performance
The key to YouthQuest’s future success is providing the at-risk teens we serve with more opportunities for vocational and academic achievement.
We’ve made our scholarship competition a priority because that’s where we can have the biggest immediate impact in helping former high school dropouts become successful, productive adults.
The changes we’ve made in the contest grew out of the discussions we had in crafting our application for the Drucker Prize, which rewards nonprofits that best exemplify business management expert Peter Drucker’s definition of innovation: “Change that creates a new dimension of performance.”
In doing so, we had to draw on the same critical thinking and problem-solving skills we teach at-risk youth through the 3D ThinkLink Initiative. We believe our innovative ideas will create a new dimension of performance for our organization and our students.
We hope the outstanding essays we received during the latest class cycle are an indication that the changes we’ve made will significantly increase the number of students who compete for scholarships, and the quality of their entries, in 2019 and beyond.
Click Here to Read the Three Winning Essays