Page 3 - January 2023 Report

Resilience
Human Beings Under the Helmets
Ifyoudidn’tseeit,youprobablyreadaboutit. OnJanuary2, defensive back Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field of a Monday night football game. He reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest and at the time of this writing is still
recovering. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay said the incident reminds us that there are “human beings under the helmets.”
We are better versions of ourselves when we view our work and others through this lens. We listen better. We work better. We even drive better. JSF has always valued the opportunities we have to meet and hear from the individual students that JSF grant dollars affect. Behind the elements of grant applications, grantee reports, and statistical metrics are people with individual and specific stories. We do our best work at JSF when we continue to look through this lens because it points us back to our mission again and again.
Robert A. Krause
We heard those stories in December. When PBA student Miriam Edele joined us for dinner, her voice was beautiful, but her story was special. Her decision to change her major from music to political science to pursue international justice was inspirational.
You recall Orlando native Samela Pynas graduated from Wesleyan University with help from Elevation Scholars. She currently works for the State Attorney’s Office and plans to attend law school.
Take Stock/ Johnson Scholar Rasha Rahaman graduated from FIU with a bachelor’s in computer science as well as an MBA. He is a software engineer for American Express, and he also works in real estate. He started an orphanage in Bangladesh.
Our work is important. And the value of our work is never better illustrated than through the narrative of the students we support. We are not responsible for their success. They own their story. They do the work. We assist them in our effort to mitigate obstacles to education and employment in their lives. But ultimately, it’s their story. We are a short chapter in their narrative, but their story is the biggest part of ours. And it’s a good one, because there are human beings under those helmets.
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