by Keith Wall

In the Spring of 2009, then Vice President of Jóvenes Adelante Jane Casa gave a young man a ride along the cobblestone road from the pueblo of San Miguel Viejo to the train station. Jose Guadalupe Granados Gonzalez, Lupillo to his friends, surprised her with his good English. When Jane asked him where he had learned to speak English so well, he said he had spent a year in the U.S. as an exchange student when he was 15. Lupillo was about to graduate from preparatoria (high school) and wanted to be a doctor.

On high alert for deserving Jóvenes Adelante beca (scholarship) applicants, Jane asked the young man how he was going to afford medical school. He smiled and shrugged. He didn't know.

“Do you have good grades?” she asked. “Yes.”

“Have you heard of Jóvenes Adelante?” He hadn’t. So within a few days, and just under the wire, Jane printed out a scholarship application form, helped Lupillo fill it out, and he submitted it. He was interviewed twice, once in El Centro and again at his home in rural San Miguel Viejo.

JA interviewers met the family and were impressed both by

their determination that Lupillo receive a good education and their financial struggles. His father brings home little money from occasional jobs as an albañil (bricklayer) and with the economic downturn, his two older brothers in the US are only able to send a little money home, now and then. Meanwhile, Lupillo’s mother was preoccupied with the health of his younger sister who has kidney disease and had already lost one kidney. In addition to her on-going medical expenses, she and her mother still have frequent appointments with doctors and clinics in Mexico City. So there clearly were very limited funds available in the family to help Lupillo with a university education.

On the basis of high grades, maturity, determination, and demonstrated financial need, Lupillo was recommended for a Jóvenes Adelante scholarship.

In spite of four medical school applications, which Lupillo paid for using his own savings, he was not accepted anywhere in the Fall of 2009. Lupillo was not discouraged however. He had found a job working as a paramedic-trainee with the Red Cross and took every training program offered, simultaneously studying medical texts on his own.

In the spring of 2010, he began applying again, this time in biotechnology engineering. When he was accepted at the Universidad Politécnica in Pénjamo near Irapuato, he immediately contacted Jóvenes Adelante. “He is still very focused on getting into medical school, but after having no luck getting into several medical schools, he decided to prove himself in an associated field with the hope that it will eventually help get into one of Mexico's very competitive medical school programs,” explains JA Scholarship Chair Fran Mahoney.

Although it was already late in the 2010 selection process, JA’s scholarship committee quickly met to reconsider his prior acceptance into JA, reviewed his application, scheduled an interview, and then had to come up with the funds for him.

They did, and Lupillo is now a Jóvenes Adelante scholarship recipient, living and studying in Pénjamo, and sharing an apartment and expenses with three other students. He has also started volunteering every free moment he can find with the Red Cross in Pénjamo, going along with ambulances, providing triage, giving shots, and anything else he can help with. And he does the same with the Red Cross in San Miguel whenever he comes home on the weekends or for holidays.

Lupillo’s beca of $13,000 pesos per year is just enough to cover tution and most of his living expenses. So he puts aside a few pesos every week to that he can make the three-hour bus ride home a couple of weekends every month to see his family.

The Jóvenes Adelante beca Lupillo and other 2010 applicants receive became possible only because of a gratifying response to JA’s late-summer fundraising drive. Without these last-minute contributions, neither Lupillo nor several other qualified applicants would be in universities pursuing their chosen professions. “They are our ‘bright lights,’ and so are the people whose contributions and sponsorships are making their university careers possible,” says JA President Pat Harding..

Jóvenes Adelante was able to grant university becas this year to 38 talented, economically disadvantaged students, 31 from the community of San Miguel and 7 in the new branch in the Guanajuato community, bringing the total number of JA students to just short of 100. In addition to receiving monthly stipends, recipients are matched with a volunteer mentor, receive donated computers as available, counseling and tutoring as may be needed, encouragement, emotional support and opportunities for social and career networking. For more information, to volunteer, contribute or sponsor a student, visit www.jovenesadelante.org or write jovenesadelante@gmail.org.

* Keith Wall is a free-lance journalist living in San Miguel de Allende, and a volunteer with Jóvenes Adelante, A.C.

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