SALEM – Three 2020 North Shore high school graduates are the recipients of the inaugural Bright Minds Scholarship awards, an organization recently founded by the Salem Five Charitable Foundation.
This year’s recipients are Lynn resident Lubbi Angel, a graduate of Lynn Vocational Technical High School who is attending Mount Holyoke College;
Salem resident Sarah Curley, a graduate of the Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School who is attending UMass Lowell; and Lynn resident DeAndre Mai, a graduate of Lynn English High School who is also attending UMass Lowell.
“It’s an honor to receive this scholarship and definitely takes the financial stress off my mom (Lidia Maldonado) and me,” said Angel. “It’s always been just my mom and me, and she is a single parent, so it means a lot to me, not only because it is making it possible for me to go to college, but because I am the first generation in my family to do so. My goal is to hopefully complete my four years and get my degree, and having this scholarship makes that goal much easier to realize.”
“We were impressed with all of the candidate finalists presented by the team at (the Stephen Phillips Memorial Scholarship Fund), but Lubbi, Sarah and Deandre were particularly remarkable, based on their academic achievements, their extracurricular activities and the quality of their essays,” said Salem Five President and CEO Ping Yin Chai. “We’re thrilled to help these three students offset the cost of college, and we’re confident that they will emerge four years from now as promising young professionals in their respective professions.”
Angel, who hopes someday to become a clinical psychologist, said she is grateful for the support she received by her La Vida Scholars program advisor, Arly Macario.
“At times I doubted whether or not I could get into my school and whether or not I could get the scholarship to help pay for it,” said Angel, who is currently at home in Lynn while attending first-semester classes at Mount Holyoke remotely.
“As the first in my family to attend college, I was really walking this path blind and didn’t know the ins and outs of the process, so La Vida definitely helped me figure all that out and now, with the scholarship, I know I can afford to pay for college. It’s such a relief knowing that.”
Facilitated by the Phillips Memorial Scholarship Fund in Salem, which assembled a list of potential candidates, the Bright Minds Scholarship Award program was created as part of Salem Five’s commitment to giving back to the communities it serves. The scholarship program’s mission is to help to defray the cost of higher education for academically successful students in Essex and Middlesex counties.
Awards are for up to $12,000 per student for higher education expenses over a four-year period, with scholars eligible to receive up to $3,000 annually provided they remain in good academic standing, among other criteria.
The Salem Five Executive Committee partnered with the Phillips Fund to extensively review applications before selecting the award’s recipients.
For nearly 30 years, the Phillips Fund has been offering four-year scholarships to deserving New England students who display academic achievement, a commitment to serving others, a strong work ethic and leadership qualities.
The Salem Five Charitable Foundation works to support organizations making a positive impact in the communities served by Salem Five and ensuring vibrant and viable futures for those they serve. Requests to the Salem Five Charitable Foundation can be made through the bank’s Community Donations Program. The Foundation contributes to more than 500 organizations throughout the region and considers requests ranging from $50 to $10,000. The average donation per request is less than $1,000.
Anne Marie Tobin can be reached at [email protected].
