Friday, June 18, 2010

Alternative high school grads head to college with scholarship help and a chance at their dreams | OregonLive.com

Alternative high school grads head to college with scholarship help and a chance at their dreams

Published: Friday, June 18, 2010, 6:50 PM Updated: Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:04 PM

Carolina Hidalgo, The Oregonian
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Benjamin Brink/The OregonianEgbevado Ananouko (from left), Cristian Munoz-Campos, Abby Parker, Patricia Orduna-Torres and Jalena McCleary celebrate their graduation last week from Open Meadow High School. All are recipients of a scholarship aimed at helping students who overcame obstacles such as language barriers, being a parent and spending time in foster care -- and who face challenges in attending college.

Thirty miles.

That's the distance Egbevado Ananouko remembers walking at age 8 to get from his village in Togo, in West Africa, to a refugee camp in neighboring Benin.

He spent three years in the camp, with no schooling and little food, followed by news of a sponsor and a flight to the United States.

At 11, Ananouko touched down in Portland, where the language was strange and the weather felt like being in a refrigerator. He quickly turned to violence to deal with taunts he couldn't understand.

"I went through a lot of hard times trying to connect with people," Ananouko, 20, said last week at North Portland's Open Meadow High School, a school for at-risk youths. "I kind of used anger to solve my problems because I didn't understand English."

But now, Ananouko is one of a dozen new graduates set to start college in the fall with a scholarship specifically for students who overcame hardships to finish high school and who face further obstacles in attending college.

"It really recognizes students who've struggled along the way but have succeeded and show the potential to continue," said Simone Rede, who works with students at alternative high schools

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Friday, June 18, 2010