Maya's Yale Young Global Scholars Fundraising Campaign!

Hello everyone,

My name is Maya Matthews, I am a junior from Gardena, California and I have had the fortunate opportunity to attend the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, CA. I have always remained true to my mission to pursue challenges directly in order to achieve excellence, and now that I have been accepted to the Yale Young Global Scholars: International Affairs & Security 2015 Summer Program, my greatest challenge is to raise all funds necessary to attend. Yale Young Global Scholars is an academic summer program dedicated to students, like myself, who have a passion for international relations, and wish to fully immerse themselves in the contemporary challenges our global community faces in order to produce potential solutions, after extensive negotiation, critical thinking, and the use of historical events as resources. The opportunity to connect with other students my age from all over the world and collaborate on such pressing and prevalent matters this summer at Yale University is an experience I cannot even fathom myself missing. For this reason, I am sincerely asking for any and all donations to support my attendance at Yale Young Global Scholars: International Affairs & Security 2015. With your donation, I will be provided the necessary foundation to make major contributions to the global community, and catalyze the abridging of the developmental gap between prosperous, “First World” countries, and the underdeveloped, “Third-World Countries” via creative economic, political, and legal reform. Your donation will allow me to be a leader focused upon international improvement, and make an impact so bold and brilliant as to send our global community into an era of prosperity for all nations. Your investment in my mission begins here, and I am ecstatic to spend two weeks at Yale Young Global Scholars learning how to serve the global community well.

Aside from International Affairs, Security, Politics, Law and Economics, I am a devoted advocate of equitable exercise of Human and Civil Rights internationally as well as domestically. I currently serve as Vice President of the Crossroads People for Ethnic And Cultural Equity (PEACE) Club, and was able to attend the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., also with external funding. After that experience, my passion for human rights and social equity reached its zenith, and has remained invigorated since then, as I have led numerous assemblies at my school on the subject of social equity (in terms of race, socioeconomic status, gender, etc.), I assumed a greater leadership role in the club, and I have made presentations on the campuses of local high schools like Harvard Westlake and the Buckley School to speak on behalf of the Southern California People of Color in Independent Schools on the subject of Socioeconomic Equity and Gender Equity in Education on local and international scale. I am confident attending a summer program as impacting and indispensable as Yale Young Global Scholars would invigorate my already major passion for improving the global community, and I am excited for what will come from such an experience.

Lastly, I work with the intentions of being an impactful leader and representative of my international and local community. I want to serve as the voice for those whose freedoms were stripped away from them, and pay homage to the community that sculpted me into the person I am today as well as the person I have the potential of being in the future. Therefore, community service plays a major role in my life. I was selected to be a part of the Community Service Leadership Council at school, I served as the Community Service Leading Representative for PEACE Club, I was one of fourteen students selected to travel to San Francisco to perform an off-broadway musical for people in rehabilitation centers, juvenile halls, charities, centers for the visually impaired, mentally disabled, and other underrepresented and disadvantaged people in society, and I consistently participate in many local community service endeavors. I am also a Student Ambassador for the National Society of High School Scholars, a coalition of high achieving student leaders dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and service to the community.     

Amongst these things, I am also on the Girls Varsity Tennis Team, have an academic schedule of all Honors and Advanced Studies classes maintaining a high GPA, and participate in many other academic and extracurricular programs and activities. I want to be the best that I can be in order to serve and lead the best that I possibly can, in order to live in the best world possible. Attending Yale Young Global Scholars is just the first step in this journey, and I sincerely appreciate your financial support in helping me to attend the Yale Young Global Scholars: International Affairs & Security Summer Program 2015.