Letter to the EgoStom's recipients

In the past 3 years, recipients of the EgoStom program (Education goes through the Stomach) have been regularly reading stories and writing short essays about the moral values instilled in them and their own learning experiences.

A review panel, consisting of volunteers, has corrected errors as well as provided feedback and recommendations on the submitted essays. Students with the best essays receive an additional award of 150,000 VND to 200,000 VND, on top of the monthly EgoStom financial support ranging from 300,000 VND to 500,000 VND. This year, the students who have made extra effort were rewarded by the judge Phương Anh with book vouchers to motivate them to read more.

This effort provides GiKaD with an opportunity to observe the development of the recipients. Some of students have always been focused and serious about the task. However, there are also students who have submitted sloppy and thoughtless essays and they did it just to meet the bare minimum requirements to receive EgoStom funding without any additional efforts.

GiKaD has written a letter to the EgoStom's recipients, which we would like to share with you to provide insight into our work.

25/05/2023

Dear scholarship recipients,

The primary goal of the "Education Goes through the Stomach - EgoStom" program is to further support students on their journey to get out of poverty through education and instill moral values into their upbringing by reading meaningful fables and writing thoughtful essays. Our hope is for our selected students to become outstanding individuals who are compassionate and willing to help others in need. The EgoStom program can only accept a small, fixed number of deserving students. Students who are in the EgoStom program have been carefully selected from over a hundred recipients of the Greenleaves scholarship program.

It has been three years since the program started. Every quarter, students are required to write an essay on a given subject of the fables or meaningful life stories. The purpose of these exercises is for students to express their inner thoughts on the subject and their lessons learned. Some of students have always been focused and serious about the task. However, many students, even the ones in the 10th, 11th, 12th grade, or university level, have submitted sloppy and thoughtless essays. They did it just to meet the requirements to receive EgoStom funding. These students have disappointed the review panel, who invested a lot of precious time and effort to assess the essays and provide proper feedback. By not putting in their efforts, these students also disappoint the benefactors who financially support the scholarship funding.

As a result, those students who do not make efforts to improve their work despite the reinforcements and feedback from the panel will have to leave the program to give better deserving students an opportunity to participate. It is also important to note that students of the EgoStom program earn extra points to enhance their chances when applying for the GL500+ scholarship (this scholarship was introduced in the academic year 2022-2023 to help students in need further).

"Every achievement requires some intellect, but above all, it requires a lot of "pain and sweat." People often blame their lack of intelligence as an excuse to forgive themselves, but they forget that everyone has the ability to put in little or lots of effort, and that is entirely up to oneself " (Ms. Dương Nguyệt Ánh, wrote this in a letter to the student who she supported).

We sincerely hope that you will strive to be the best you can be, and work hard to develop your moral character to become valuable members of society in the future.

Best regards,

❤ The GiKaD-Team ❤