AmCham Foundation Alumni
ACFPI Scholar 1997 - 2005

In this world where competition has always been existent, there is no way to survive but to live the life of excellence that you are living. This, I have learned in my eight years of stay with AmCham Foundation.

Growing up in a slum area with windows showing nothing but the pitiful picture of poverty each day must have discouraged a child from dreaming big and walking by faith in reaching it. I believe otherwise. Even as a child, I always told my parents that poverty isn't as strong as human will. It should never enslave and mitigate the development of a person, a family, nor a country. After all, God has blessed the Philippines with foundations which create a different and more positive picture of poverty. That's what AmCham has proven to me.

Just this April, I graduated from my tertiary education with the aid of AmCham's scholarship program. By then, I knew I am in the road towards my parents' and my own dream. Now, I am working as a Divisional Planner at Intel and am facing the challenge to prove that poverty, like any other thing here on earth, is temporal. At this
point, I still can't say that I have achieved much but I am confident enough to say that AmCham was successful in raising up an independent person in me.

For this, I cannot thank you less. I owe these achievements to you who formed and molded me into becoming a person who aims for excellence and dares to be competitive even if it means striving hard and facing tough challenges.

I wish I could do something to pay you back but I know that what I am capable of doing would not be enough to show my gratitude to you and to the foundation that has reared me for eight blessed years. My family and I thank you for extending your blessings to us and to other children like me who need you. I hope you would never grow weary in doing good and that the AmCham Foundation be fruitful in its
endeavors. Your labor is never in vain.

May God bless you more.

Sincerely,
Ligaya L. Gastalla