Girls Inc. names Hero Scholarship winners

LYNN – Girls Incorporated of Lynn has announced two winners of the 2008 Girl Heroes Scholarship, giving a pair of high school seniors an opportunity to further their education at the college level.Classical Senior Sokleang Keo and English Senior Gisell De la Cruz have been a part of the Girls Inc. for two years, and are both headed to the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston this fall.Girls Inc. will award each girl $2,500 to put toward their education in any way they wish.The organization hands out the Girl Hero award each year, but the number of recipients depends on the number of applications and the funding available for the scholarships.Based on volunteer work, essays, recommendations and personal interviews, an internal panel of Girls Inc. judges select the winners each year, and honor the winners at Thursday’s annual Girls Incorporated Luncheon at the Danversport Yacht Club.The two award winners are good friends, and the transition from high school to college will be made easier for the pair as they plan to live together on campus in the fall.”We are excited to be going to school together, we are so happy,” said Keo. “We are going together and we are going to be roommates – we are really excited.”Girls Inc. Director Patricia Driscoll said that although the two girls have not been members of the organization for a long time, they have shown leadership skills and forward thinking that have proved both worthy of the award.”Even though both have only been at Girls Inc. for a short time, in that time they have both really stood out,” she said. “Both girls are very smart and very forward thinking. Gisell wants to be an architect and Sokleang wants to go into engineering, and to see the girls want to enter a field that is traditionally male dominating was very exciting to us.”Keo will major in biology and engineering next fall, as she hopes to enter the medical field as a biomedical engineer, while De la Cruz says she will study architecture.Both girls are involved in several programs at Girls Inc., including Career Paths and Part of the Solution, a substance abuse prevention program for teenage girls. The two friends also say they are planning to take a real estate course this summer as an added skill to utilize once they enter the workforce.”Both of the girls have been real leaders at Girls Inc. for a long time,” said Driscoll. “Gisell works at the Part of the Solution program along with Sokleang, and they have been involved with many fundraisers like the Walk for AIDS and the Walk for HAWC. They are always taking advantage of what we have and what we offer.”The Career Paths program helps high school students with a variety of challenges that they will face in their senior year and after graduation, such as finding a job, applying for college and interviewing skills.”We love Girls Inc. It has helped us so much,” said De la Cruz. “Career Paths helps with everything, interview skills, job recruiting, anything we need. It teaches how to live after high school.”The two award winners will be honored this Thursday at the 20th annual Girls Inc. Luncheon at the Danversport Yacht Club. The event will feature a special appearance by Channel 7 News Anchor Frances Rivera, along with several accomplished Girls Inc. alumni.”In the past we have always had a guest speaker from the outside, but this year we are able to focus on the alumni,” Driscoll said. “To be at a point where we can showcase our own alumni at the luncheon says a lot about how far the organization has come.”