Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Washington, D.C. (TADIAS) – The soon-to-be first generation college student, Rahel Bogale, who is a student at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Virginia, was selected as the 2014 Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) Summer Institute student speaker for the national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to her high school “Rahel’s essay was chosen from thousands of applicants and comes with a $500 award.”

“My whole life I have been shy, reserved and often kept to myself,” Rahel said in her speech to her classmates. “As a student, I was the same way, not many teachers paid attention to me, because I earned decent grades in all my classes and I barely spoke up.” Rahel added: “As a young Ethiopian immigrant, I understood the value of education, and the pressure to somehow prove my parents’ sacrifice to leave everything – a lucrative accounting firm, two houses, and anything familiar to them – to move half-way around the world so I can have a better chance at life was something that I had to prove and it is all worth it.”

Watch: Rahel Bogale – AVID Philadelphia Summer Institute 2014 (Video by AVID Center)

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