6 Futures Update - The Wonders of a Gap Year!!!

For every generation, there's a gap?

You remember this picture:

Top row L-R: Claude, Maurice and Innocent
Bottom row L-R: Serge, Pacific and Du

and maybe this post about those six young men.

These were my top six students at ASYV. We worked together a ton and I really love these kids. They're being very serious in these official photos, but I remember them more like this:

Serge, Pacific, me, Innocent, Claude & Du.
(Maurice typically not pictured because, as always, he is behind the camera.)

So last year I told you that one of these six students received a full Scholarship to McGill University in Montreal (Innocent in the top right). I also told you that Pacific (bottom center) and Claude (top left) were accepted into a gap year program called Bridge2Rwanda.

Well a gap year does wonders. Five (5!) of these six students now have full scholarships to universities abroad! I am delighted for them all.

Thanks to support from Bridge2Rwanda and mostly their own hard work, Pacific (bottom center) will be attending Texas Christian University in Fort Worth Texas & Claude (top left) will be attending the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY.

Always resourceful, Maurice and Serge both found their own gap year programs. Serge was working with a program at the US embassy and will be joining Innocent at McGill University as a MasterCard Scholar. I am so glad they will be there together. Maurice was in a film internship program supported by the German government (? sure, why not?) and will be joining Immaculee & Jeaninne as a MasterCard Scholar at Arizona State University where he will major in film production. Maurice is going to fit right in and I can get regular reports from Macky & Jeaninne like the overprotective mother hen I have become.

Du, (bottom right) is still in the process of applying to Ashesi University in Ghana and I know he won't let up until he finds a program where he can succeed.

The resilience of these kids never ceases to amaze me. There have been a lot of “No”s on this journey but they kept pushing and fighting and this determination has been rewarded with some pretty huge opportunities.  I can't want to see how they use these chances.