In 2020, YAC student Salah Issa was selected to receive a $1,000 surprise scholarship. With this in mind, Salah had reached out and made the kind request to pay it forward to our current YAC scholarship recipient, Ashley Lopez! We hosted a dinner with her family to surprise her and celebrate her achievement, with Salah presenting the scholarship.
We followed up with Ashley who will be starting her first year at San Diego State University this Fall to ask her about her YAC experience and future aspirations.
Ashley plans on majoring in Microbiology, which was inspired by previous internships she has done in high school. After college, she envisions herself completing her Master’s Degree. While she is still undecided about what she wants to specifically pursue after her studies, her dream job would include working in the biomedical field. Despite her later start to YAC, Ashley shared how much the program positively impacted her. Her favorite memories with YAC include having fun, meeting new faces from other high schools which was huge for her as she went to a small high school, being able to come up with ideas to help and create change in the community, and being able to learn and grow.
One particular memory that Ashley talked about is a trip to the San Diego Craft Collective’s garden in Liberty Station, where they learned about ecology/ecosystem, how to take care of plants and their importance, etc. Another core memory of hers is being part of a 2-month Journey to Impact program on food insecurity in collaboration with Dream Ducats (a non-profit organization in San Diego). Through this, she was able to be on a panel with other YAC youth to share about her lived-experiences as a low-income household and first generation student and the importance of advocating for food justice in her community.
Receiving the YAC scholarship was not only exciting for her, but also special given the impact that YAC has had on her life and the opportunity to bring awareness to topics important to her. In addition, it was an acknowledgement of her hard work. The advice Ashley shared with younger/new YAC members is: “if there’s an opportunity to do something, go for it, don’t be shy – take the opportunity because you never know what you’ll gain from it, even if it’s for social skills or meeting new people it’s all worth it in the end, it can give you a new perspective, step out of your comfort zone”.
Congrats again to Ashley and a big thank you to Salah!