Rev. Moegagogo & Lauina Tamasese
The Scholarship Program is one of the ministries of the First Samoan Congregational UCC Church of Alameda, a non-profit organization established in 1976 in the County of Alameda and incorporated in the State of California. Originally established on the Sunday of Memorial Weekend 2004 as a Memorial Scholarship to keep the memories of our latest Church members alive, the Scholarship Fund Program has taken up an outreach role to and for our members and the community at large. The Fund is a vital and a much needed option for many of our under served young people with higher learning aspirations. The goal is to raise fund to supplement the enormous cost of higher education that often keep most of our less fortunate youths from attending colleges and universities. The Fund is mainly supported by charitable donations from Church members, families, and friends.
Over the years, the fund provided supplement support towards book cost and/or tuition for many less fortunate college students in the San Francisco East Bay counties, states, and territories. The majority of the students attend local colleges and universities like Laney College, Diablo Valley College, Chabot College, Las Positas College, University of California in Berkeley, to name some of the few. Others enroll in other out of town institutions like Fresno State University, University of South Dakota, Tusculum College of Greenville, Tennessee. Some recently graduated this from University of California, Berkeley, and Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. The demand is always greater than the little help the fund provides. We need financial help in order to continue this ministry. Thus is the reason for our Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament. We need the support from the community at large.
It is our belief that when small segments of a community benefit, the community as a whole also benefits. It is a proven fact that educated people become good citizens and more productive and/or contributing members of society. This is very much in line with our Lord's wish for his people to be "light " and "salt" of the world.
Furthermore, in keeping with the tradition of Great Commission "to go into the world and make disciples...," We believe that discipleship involves the training of the "Mind, Soul, and Spirit." We adopt as our motto for this scholastic endeavor the belief that, "The Mind is Not Only a Terrible Thing to Waste, But a Beautiful Thing to Educate."
