When someone does community service, they don’t usually expect anything in return. However, that is exactly what happened for eight lucky Brahmas through the service club Girls’ League.

Several applicants applied for Girls’ League’s tenth annual merit scholarship, which includes a $500 and $100 scholarship for any student on campus. In addition, this year, the club introduced a separate $500 scholarship solely devoted for an outstanding Girls’ League officer.

After much deliberation, the judging panel, which consisted of Girls’ League advisers Lisa Pacheco, Margaret Carson, and Connie Chen along with several Girls’ League officers, chose Joy Chow and Albert Phone for the $500 prize and Rebecca Figueroa, Sylvia Guan, Jasmine Lin, Zachary Lu, and Kwanze Stewart for the $100 scholarship. The Girls’ League president Mandy Lai won the officer scholarship.

“Everybody is very qualified. It’s hard to make a decision because we liked them all but ultimately, it is a merit-based scholarship and we’re looking at their service profile,” Pacheco said.
Although Phone cites his dedication to community service through Boy Scouts of America as the most likely reason for winning the $500 scholarship, he was still extremely surprised to hear the good news.

“When I first received the $500 scholarship, I was pretty surprised. I actually forgot that they were handing out the results Monday because I was preoccupied with taking the AP Biology test in the morning, so receiving it after was quite a nice surprise,” Phone said via Facebook.

Because Girls’ League did not want to show a form of nepotism in the past, the club did not have the Girls’ League officer scholarship until this year. However, this changed because the club not only had sufficient funds but also because some of the officers demonstrated the same merit as the other applicants.

“We have some really merit-worthy officers who have not just volunteered in Girls’ League and done service but went beyond that and we thought ‘Okay, we’re going to recognize a stellar officer and their accomplishments’,” Pacheco commented on the issue.

The application for the scholarship included a 300 to 500 word essay, a recent transcript of their grades, a resume that reflected their community service work, verification of an accepted university, and a letter of recommendation.