Whether a friendship, family relationship or business or personal partnership, any bond is built on trust. When then Academy Scholar Shawn told his mom he wanted to go to Boys Hope Girls Hope St. Louis after school, she knew it was a good place, “Because he tells it like it is.”
Shawn’s curiosity is how he first learned about the BHGHSTL Academy program. “I saw a big blue van picking up so many kids and could not figure where they were going, or what was going on,” says Shawn. “Someone told me the name of the program and I kept repeating it to myself all the way home… Boys Hope Girls Hope… Boys Hope Girls Hope…. And then I googled it when I got home.”
Shawn’s mother, Felister, who came to the St. Louis area from Kenya just two years ago, is overjoyed with the opportunities the program has afforded her son. She recalled a time he went to a farm on one of his trips with the Academy. “He could not stop talking about it,” she says. “He even came home with a corn stalk – something he had never seen before!” Felister wants Shawn to pursue a quality education and someday be independent and “do all that he has dreamed he could do!”
Shawn is currently in 6th grade at St. Francis Cabrini Academy and has recently transitioned to the BHGHSTL residential program. He loves soccer, basketball, and video games and is very proud to share the story of his winning soccer season playing striker or midfield. Shawn hopes to continue his soccer skills at De Smet Jesuit High School – the high school he’s set his sights on attending – and hopes to become a doctor or study business.
Shawn will be attending Camp Thunderbird in northern Minnesota this summer on a full scholarship through A Thousand Summers (formerly the John Austin Cheley Foundation). Throughout this three-week leadership camp, Shawn will experience many more “firsts” through the endless new adventures that await him. While Shawn may not know anyone when he first gets off the bus at camp, he’s sure to form friendships quickly, just like he has at Boys Hope Girls Hope.
Felister said it best when reflecting on Shawn’s experience, “I want people to know when you send your kids to BHGHSTL, you are doing a good thing for your kids. The staff is excellent and will help them grow and learn a lot.”