Programs

  • David's Educational Opportunity Fund

    David's Educational Opportunity Fund provides tuition payments, student expenses (internet, bus fare to and from classes, lunch expenses, materials), medical, dental, and vision coverage, family emergency funds, tutoring, and psychological counseling to selected students in higher education, both university and technical schools. Our students come from families with very limited economic resources, typically $5000 annual income. Without the help of DEOF, these students would not have the opportunity to develop their talents fully or contribute commensurately with their abilities to their communities and society. DEOF offers these students additional educational and emotional support because their previous educations are often of poor quality. Furthermore, they are typically the first members of their families to have the opportunity to study at this level. We maintain very regular contact with our students through Zoom to evaluate how they are doing in their classes and more generally in their lives. We aim to teach them to analyze carefully the problems they are encountering, and we work with them to develop ways to resolve them. Problems encountered include incidents of random violence, family violence or dysfunction, and robbery, as well as serious illness in family members and long-untreated vision and dental concerns. We are assisted in this by Ecuadorean allies, whom we have developed over the years, and increasingly, by our own students who have graduated from universities and technical schools. In 2024, we supported 19 active students. Four graduated this year, in the fields of early childhood education, elementary education, and paramedic services. Five additional students are expected to graduate in 2025 in the fields of law, psychology, and teaching English as a Second Language. In addition, past graduates include an environmental engineer, two fashion designers, two computer scientists, a communications specialist, three accountants, one graduate in international business, an optometrist, a veterinarian, a cosmetologist, and a technical nurse. Current students include students studying law, psychology, teaching, nursing, social work, mechanical engineeriing, medicine, and architecture. The cost of this program is very modest by the standards of the United States. On average, the cost per student is between $4000 and $5000 per year to support a student in a comprehensive way. Costs vary among students because of differences in tuition and the circumstances of the students and their families. Most students, when they begin to work with us, need a new computer adequate for their university studies. The fundraising work of David's Fund is done gratis by the principal directors, Mike Byrd and Maggie Felker. We have an in-country director, Rubén Altamirano, who knows many of our students well and has a wide network of contacts in the Quito business community, and an education coordinator, Angélica Bedón. We also work with Carolina Bustos, a clinical psychologist, who offers online counseling services to over 30% of our students at any given time. An additional support is an organized group of tutors, Estudia Inteligente, which has provided extra academic help to our students in a variety of courses. We are very selective in our choice of students and are dedicated to the success and well-being of each one of them. While Ecuadorean university graduation rates are abysmal, certainly below 25% for poor people, we have lost only three students during our first 12 years of operation. So our success rate is over 90%. This attests to the quality of the young people in this program and the success of DEOF's model of comprehensive and personalized support.
    Geographies
    Not indicated
    Dates
    Jan 1, 2024 – Dec 31, 2024
    Source
    990
    No causes provided
    No populations provided
    –
    $19.4K