As FCSN continues its goal of building a welcoming community and improving its programs and events, for the third year now, FCSN offered its scholarship fund to youth volunteers in support of their college education and in recognition of their valuable contribution to the special needs community. As part of the scholarship committee chair, Jason Hwan (co-president of FCSN) explains, “We really want to give this opportunity to recognize and show our appreciation to those wonderful volunteers.”

With a holistic view, this year’s scholarship committee chair considered applicants based on various different criteria. To be eligible to apply:

• Applicants had to be students in their senior year who intend to attend full-time at a U.S. college/university in fall 2023 or full-time undergraduate/graduate school students, be a FCSN full-time staff member who worked 30+ hours/week for at least an year, or non-FCSN-staff who meet a minimum of 30 volunteer hours
• Had to be citizens or legal permanent residents of the United States
• A minimum GPA of 3.0
• And finally, to tie the whole application together, a 750 word autobiographical essay

These criteria were only a small portion of applying for this scholarship. The committee chair sought individuals who displayed leadership qualities, passion, experience with helping people with special needs, future goals of furthering their efforts to help others, and much more. Wanting to view applicants during the selection process in a broader view, the committee recognized the different types of volunteers within the FCSN organization. Hwan elaborates “[There are] volunteers that are very patient and very good with working side-by-side with our special needs individuals, [and] that’s very amazing. On the other hand, we have young folks that prefer doing projects, project management, and designing programs. We like to select an award recipient from all kinds of categories.”

With many qualified applicants for the scholarship, Hwan discusses the committee’s possible future goals to increase the budget used towards this scholarship fund, as well as the number of recipients, for the upcoming years: “It was very challenging for the committee to simply choose three or four among all the wonderful applicants…this is another reason why we would like to increase the number of recipients…we are hoping to see more.” 

FCSN’s mission to strive towards expanding its organization and its impact on others is what prompted the committee chair this year to award the scholarship to more individuals, with a total of 10 recipients. The ten winners were awarded either $1000 or $2000, with five receiving $1000, and the other half receiving $2000. The winners are Carmia Deng, Isabelle Hsu, Ashley Ma, Jennie Wang, Rachel Bao, Rosalie Chiang, Shelley Li, Christina Chang, Allison Kam, and Ryan Liu.

“[To be] volunteering is that you give, but you do not expect a certain format of return. The process of giving is already the best way for the return,” Hwan concluded.