Seattle Filipino Businessmen Launch Scholarships at the University of Washington
For the first time, Filipino students at the University of Washington could compete for prizes funded by local Filipino entrepreneurs.
For the first time in the history of the University of Washington Filipino Club, scholarship prizes will be offered this year to Filipino students in the university who maintain high grades during the school year and who show active participation in club activities and in university intramural affairs.
Filipino business men of Seattle, realizing that in previous years Filipinos in the state university have had a creditable showing not only in the classrooms but in university activities as well, have decided to award prizes annually to such Filipinos as deserve them. This, they believe, would also give stimulus to others who are more or less lagging in their studies.
A first prize of $50 is being offered by Juan B. Urbano, inventor of the new Urbano electric pencil and flashlight; $30 will go for second prize and is being offered by Pio de Cano, enterprising cannery contractor in Seattle; and the third prize of $15 comes from Valeriano Lago, the youngest Filipino business man of Seattle, who owns the only Filipino-owned grocery store in the city and is a cannery contractor besides.
Dr. Pedro Guiana, Filipino graduate of the University of Washington, is the chairman of the committee on awards.
The winners in this scholarship contest will be announced at the graduation banquet which will be held early in June.
“For the first time in the history of the University of Washington Filipino Club, scholarship prizes will be offered this year”
The prize fund was small, but it marked a community investing in its own students at a time when Filipino immigrants faced growing hostility. Today, scholarship programs for first-generation and immigrant students still carry that same double purpose: practical help and public recognition. The story reads as a reminder that mutual aid has long been part of Seattle’s Filipino community.
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