The FedChoice Charitable Foundation Announces Scholarship Winners

The FedChoice Charitable Foundation recently announced the winners of its 2024 Educational Scholarship Program.

Pictured: left to right - Alina Smith, Hasan Alwan, Gabriel Roque and Natalie Portillo.

The program aims to support college-bound and trade school-bound high school students from our community in their academic endeavors. This year's scholarship winners are:

- Hasan Alwan, Parkdale High School
- Natalie Portillo, Parkdale High School
- Gabriel Roque, Bowie High School
- Alina Smith, Parkdale High School

Hasan plans to use his scholarship funds to pay for parking fees and college materials at University of Maryland College Park. Natalie is headed to Montgomery College to major in health sciences. Gabriel will be attending Prince George's Community College, while Alina will be attending Bowie State University.

As part of their winning applications, each wrote an essay on the following topic: "Discover Your E3: How Credit Unions help Embrace, Educate and Elevate local communities."

The applicants provided their unique perspectives on how Credit Unions:

• Embrace our communities by providing financial services tailored to their needs,
• Educate members about financial literacy and empowerment, and
• Elevate our communities by fostering economic growth and stability.

"Many credit unions embrace their communities. They become a staple within the community and become a part of the culture. You can see this in any neighborhood, the credit union has a lot of that respective communities' culture and ambiance," said Gabriel.

Hasan reflected that "credit unions actively put their commitment to educating and empowering members with robust financial literacy and money management skills into practice. Many provide free workshops, one-on-one counseling, online resources, and more to help individuals enhance their knowledge about budgeting, saving, borrowing, and investing for the future."

Natalie shared that "the long-term effects of financial education on the youth are transformative. Youth who receive financial literacy education are more likely to achieve higher levels of education and pursue rewarding careers because of their preparedness in real life situations or problems."

Brett Noll, President/CEO of FedChoice Federal Credit Union and FedChoice Charitable Foundation Board President said, "We were very impressed with our scholarship winners understanding of the importance of financial literacy and the positive impact of credit unions. We wish each of them tremendous success in college and life!"