Congratulations to Our 2025 BSLA First in the Family Humanist Forward Freethought Scholarship Awardees!
Congratulations to the six 2019 First in the Family Humanist and Catherine Fahringer scholarship winners! With generous support from the Freedom from Religion Foundation and our secular humanist community donors, BSLA was able to award six students from the secular, LGBTQI and undocumented youth communities $2500 and $1000 scholarships for their first year in college. BSLA extends its gracious thanks and appreciation to the following critical donors and committee members:
Liz Ross, BSLA committee
D. Frederick Sparks, BSLA committee
Aaron Dowell, BSLA
Toni Bell, BSLA committee
Darren Johnson, BSLA committee
Mandisa Thomas, Black Non-Believers
American Humanist Association
Anthony Pinn
Christopher Cameron
Debbie Goddard
Greg Epstein
Colleen Jousma
Audra Lifka
Adam Lee
Stephanie Zvan
Debs
Mashariki Lawson
Mai Dao
Rodney Brown
Russ Naveen
Monette Richards
2019 Catherine Fahringer and First in the Family Humanist Scholarship Winners:
Claire Shamiya
Claire Shamiya is an 18 year old freethinker of Palestinian-Lebanese heritage and will be majoring in International Development Studies and minoring in Communications at UCLA. She aspires to be an attorney.
“The main reason I’ve stayed secular is because at eighteen I refuse to assimilate into a religious culture that is against what I am for, I refuse to remain stagnant in times of moral crisis and I refuse to accept prayers when the state of our world can be controlled by our very own actions. Humanism is the most influential but the most difficult aspect of life to accept as it demands accountability.”
Chinaza Onwubuemeli is an 18 year old Nigerian American humanist and will be majoring in computer engineering at San Jose State University, CA. “I have a passion for visual art and writing. In Nigeria, we have been really critical about ourselves in the name of religion, hurting and condemning each other, while still preaching love and judge no one.”
Kaitlyn Farnan
Kaitlyn Farnan is an 18 year old freethinker and will be majoring in Accounting and Information Systems this fall. “Growing up in KS, it was taboo to label yourself atheist. I was taught that I was going to hell. This scholarship can help decrease the stigma of being non-religious.”
Dylan Leon
Dylan Leon is a Latinx freethinker from Canoga Park High School in the LAUSD, will be going to UC Santa Barbara. “The Evangelion told me fairy-tale stories of His grace and love– and above all, his role as the ultimate carrier of justice–, and yet the six o’clock news would tell me the objective realities of the world, how the corrupt fed off the weak and monsters sporting human flesh would terrorize the innocent time after time. Where was He?”
Ciah Russell is an 18 years old agnostic and will be majoring in Biology with a concentration on Organismal and Field Science at Concord University. She wants to pursue admission to a veterinary school once she graduates.
“Society relies too much on religion and I don’t agree with that. We should be honing our own traits as humans rather than relying on deities.”
Hugo Cervantes
Hugo Cervantes is a 2013 scholarship winner, UC Riverside graduate and first year queer, undocumented graduate student at USC. BSLA awarded him a 2019 scholarship in honor of his continuing education in graduate school: “The First in the Family scholarship was crucial not only in supporting my first year of college but also affirming my sense of self and confidence as a student. Being seen and affirmed by people who look like me, lived in my neighborhood, who are undocumented — Black, brown, and queer widened my sense of history, of knowing people who are making a space for me I am indebted to people who made space for them. Black Skeptics Los Angeles provided an example of this principle to me as an ambitious and impressionable high schooler and has stayed with me throughout college, and into my young adulthood. Currently, I am a part of the curatorial collective at Human Resources-Los Angeles gallery, and a writer with bylines in Remezcla and The Getty blog.”
Related posts
