Denim & Dazzle Gala honors 16 scholarship winners
There’s no denying that life is filled with challenges. Some are crippling, others can instill a determination to succeed.
Just ask Joris Alawoe, one of the 16 young men to receive college scholarships at the Delta Eta Boulé Foundation’s 10th Denim & Dazzle Gala held at the Grand Hyatt Denver.
Delta Eta Boulé is a chapter of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, which invests in the next generation of leaders by providing a $10,000 college scholarship, mentoring services and internships. Attorney Penfield Tate III is the chapter president; Hollis Booker is chairman of the foundation’s board of directors.
Alawoe, a 2018 graduate of Cherry Creek High School who is in his freshman year at the University of Colorado Boulder, shared the gripping story of how becoming homeless inspired him to see the situation as a test of his willpower and strength.
By avoiding selfpity, he said, “I was able to focus on uplifting myself. I realized that life waits for no one. We can either fester in action or move forward, learning step by step. I chose the second option.
“During my junior year of high school,” Alawoe recounted, “my mother, brother and I had no home to which we could go. We moved into a domestic violence shelter, where we lived in a small bedroom together and shared a single bathroom with six other people. The shelter didn’t have internet access, which made doing online homework difficult.
“Many nights I would walk to the Mcdonald’s several blocks away to access free Wifi. The smell of French fries clung to every surface in the restaurant and the televisions blared. This environment, which didn’t lend itself to a morsel of concentration, was initially discouraging. But I learned to use it as motivation. I thought if I could overcome this obstacle, that would be a testament to my willpower and strength.”
Still, Alawoe earned A’s and B’s in all of his classes and graduated with a 3.47 grade point average. He participated in basketball and crosscountry, earned membership in the National Honor Society and had a leadership role in the Future Business Leaders of America. He also helped raise money and collect supplies for those affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
Acknowledging his fellow honorees, Alawoe noted that “All of us in this room have faced significant challenges. Organizations like the Delta Eta Boulé Foundation help us successfully confront and learn from them.”
Also speaking at Denim & Dazzle was 2016 honoree Noah Spicer, a junior studying political science at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He saluted such Delta Eta Boulé members as federal judge Wiley Daniel, Jim Kaiser, Al Cooper, Stan Jones, BJ Rogers, Brian Cooper and Rashaad Booker for their help in teaching the young scholars “How to problemsolve, deliver outstanding performance at work and design longterm professional strategies. The lessons the foundation teaches us creates a developmental bedrock upon which we can build power plants of empathy, highways of determination and skyscrapers of shared achievement.”
In addition to Alawoe, other 2018 scholarship recipients were Julian Abam, Myles Pace, Cornelius Foxworth, Kolondja Denzel Thillot, Isiah Colbert, Azim Kelani, Calvin Pope, Caleb Randolph, Hayden Smith, Caleb Seawell, Ezekiel Quattlebaum, Abraham Mclaurin, Darius Cozart, Excel Nsengiyumva and Roxford Randoll Azo.
To date, the foundation has awarded 99 scholarships to young men who have gone on to attend such prestigious universities as Howard, Tuskegee, Hampton and Creighton, graduating to careers that have taken them to such farflung destinations as Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Oslo and London.