SAYREVILLE – As Jacob Vasquez rode into a small village in the Dominican Republic, he realized how much he had back in the United States.
Far from his comfortable home in Sayreville, the villagers’ homes were made of pieces of metal tied to trees. When it was time for Vasquez and his fellow missionaries to hand out soccer balls to the village children, he realized something else, according to information provided by Gerdau North America.
“They were happy,” Vasquez said in the statement. “I couldn’t understand how they could be so happy with absolutely nothing.”
Vasquez wrote about the experience that changed his life in an essay that won one of two $2,500 scholarship from Gerdau North America, a steel manufacturer with a mill in Sayreville.
Local basketball star Isi Enahoro is the second winner.
Enahoro will study civil engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). She was part of the first county championship girls basketball team and is in the middle of summer workouts for NJIT’s women’s basketball team.
The way Enahoro was led to engineering was not through math or science – it was through art. She had always liked to draw. Her parents noticed her talent, and they suggested engineering, according to the statement.
Enahoro took an engineering drawing and architecture class where she started by learning about scales and blueprints and ended by building a bridge out of balsa wood.
“I liked the way it was laid out, starting with the basics, then ending more advanced,” she said in the statement. “My teacher, Peter Alvarez, was there for us when we needed things. Even little questions, he’d explain why things needed to be the way they were for your drawing or creation to come out the best way.”
Vasquez and Enahoro attended Sayreville War Memorial High School and are attending New Jersey colleges in the fall.
Vasquez will study engineering at Rutgers.
“I’m most looking forward to seeing if I made the right choice in industrial,” he said in the statement. “I’m excited to meet new people, extracurriculars, college life, mainly, what kind of places college can take me and the knowledge gained while studying industrial engineering.”
This is the third year the Gerdau scholarships have been given to students looking to study engineering in New Jersey. Gerdau also gives out 15 scholarships each year to children of Gerdau employees.
“Never give up on your dreams,” Enahoro said. “If you feel like you can do something, stick with it.”