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2025 PLV Scholarship Winner Fares Nassar on Immigrating from Syria and Rebuilding His Life in Orange County, CA
I am honored to introduce this year’s Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship recipient: Fares Nassar, a remarkable young leader whose integrity, resilience, and unrelenting pursuit of education embody the spirit of this award. Born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, Fares’s early life was marked by extraordinary challenges. As civil war swept across the country, he endured power outages, water shortages, missile strikes, and the loss of friends to both violence and migration. His family was displaced multiple times, and the world he once knew turned into one of survival and uncertainty. Yet amid the destruction, Fares sought light: through faith, through the hymns of his church choir, and through a…
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PLV Humanities Scholarship Winner: Ben Chlarson
I am proud to introduce Ben as the first PLV Scholarship recipient who applied as part of our recent partnership with the Newport Harbor Educational Foundation. Ben’s application essay on the importance of studying the humanities touched on many of the ideas expressed in the introduction to my Black Lives Matter post: namely the need to bridge differences in a polarized political climate by combating ignorance and hostility with curiosity, understanding, and an increased appreciation for diversity. As a Global Studies major, Ben hopes to examine the cultural frameworks that underlie our common humanity in order to someday make an impact on a national or international level. Global Studies is…
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2020 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarships
* Please note: As of 4/20/20, the deadlines for all three scholarships have been pushed back due to COVID-19. Please see details at bottom of page. Scholarship season is here again! And the PLV Scholarship Board has exciting plans in store for this year’s program: three different scholarships will be awarded to graduating seniors in Orange County, all aimed at helping students who have achieved academic excellence while experiencing personal hardship. In contrast to last year’s program design, each of the three PLV Scholarships is tailored to a specific kind of student who must fulfill a unique set of eligibility criteria. Details and application documents are provided below for those…
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PLV Scholarship Winner: Kaylee Johnson on Childhood Poverty in Orange County, California
In my last post, I noted the dispiriting increase of rates of serious mental illness in Orange County youth. There was, however, another principal area of concern identified in last year’s Conditions of Children in Orange Country report: childhood poverty. The sobering facts are detailed across several pages, broader trends backed up by a robust compilation of statistical data. I’ve highlighted some of the major findings here. Although unemployment rates remain low and the market has had an amazing run since the recovery from the Great Recession, economic well-being has been declining in recent years for OC youth, with almost half of children — 49.1%, to be exact — eligible…
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The Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
For a few years now, I’ve considered the possibility of someday starting a charitable fund or nonprofit in honor of my mother Patricia (1952-2014), who passed away unexpectedly a year after I graduated from university. It was a project I had originally intended to start much further into the future, perhaps even decades from now. Recently, however, a women’s volunteer organization (the Orange County chapter of Junior League, or JLOCC) provided me with the opportunity to be part of an ad hoc committee founded for the sole purpose of reviewing scholarship applications from local high school seniors. The experience was tremendous, as I found myself greatly moved by the stories…
