This year, 30 university students were favored with 2,000 dollars of financial aid and a computer with which to pursue training that the gardener considers vital.And to understand the value that Tapia gives to education, one must go back 60 years to Arteaga, in the state of Michoacán, where the Mexican was born and where his father died a victim of violence when he was still a child.“I would have liked to study, but that was an unattainable dream,” Tapia recalled in an interview with Efe news agency. Without training, Tapia was forced to look for opportunities in the north.
With six dollars in his pocket he illegally crossed the border in 1964 and went straight to Redwood, in northern California, where he still lives.
The situation was not easy and for years he jumped from job to job until in 1980 he became a gardener, but his greatest wish was for his children to become professionals. That’s why he started saving to help them financially.
Tapia’s effort paid off in 1999, when his son Noel graduated from law school at the University of California Berkeley, one of the best in the world.
“It was a great emotion, I felt very happy, but I saw that there were few Latinos in that graduation, so I said to myself, ‘I have to do something’,” says the 74-year-old Mexican about the pride of seeing a gardener’s son was becoming a lawyer.
Despite the fact that the salary he earned barely covered his family’s expenses, he made a promise to himself that for almost five years he kept in his head until it occurred to him to ask for donations from the wealthy property owner for whom he tended gardens.
The response was very positive, and in two weeks he raised $10,000, and in 2006 he managed to deliver the first $1,500 scholarships.
Noel and a group of colleagues helped lay the foundation and regulations for what is now the San Francisco Bay Gardeners Scholarship Foundation.
To participate, applicants must show that they are low income students, who live in the counties of San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara, have good grades, do community service and, most importantly, “want to get ahead” .
Although the scholarship is not as big as Tapia would like, the gardener has been able to see that it can make the difference.
So it happened with Noel Chavez, a young man of Mexican origin who was in the third semester of college and needed funds to pay for transportation.
Chavez, one of the first scholars and who still remains in touch with Tapia, remembers that when he learned about the scholarship he was surprised that a gardener could help him.
From the beginning of his project, the gardener established that the scholarships would not discriminate against any student and their migratory status, race, religion or gender is not taken into account.
An average of one hundred students request the aid annually, although the children of gardeners have a special benefit, since the Tapia family provides 1,000 dollars extra to complement the aid in these cases.
The Tapia initiative has received several awards such as the recognition of the social innovation Purpose Prize and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis award from the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and the Carnegie Endowment.
Now Tapia has left the gardens of his clients to devote himself completely to the foundation and encourage others to follow his example, because, he says, it does not matter if they contribute only a few dollars, because that amount can serve to provide a “student food to eat, it can be the difference”.
