Felipe Leite
Sorocaba, Brazil
PepsiCo Foundation ExCEL Award, 2009

I am from a lower-middle class family of five people. My father doesn't earn a lot and hasn't had the opportunity of studying in an undergraduate program. My mother has a degree, but she had to leave her job to take care of me and my two brothers. When I finished high school, I applied for a Brazilian government program that gives scholarships to students who achieve the best grades on their ENEM (national high school exam) and can't afford to pay for college.

I took the Vestibular, [which] consists of five days of tests covering all high school subjects. Though I was not selected to a public university, I did earn a full scholarship for one of the best gastronomy courses in Brazil. I had to move to Campos do Jordao, a tourist city about 300km from my parents' hometown.

Two years later I was about to achieve my degree in gastronomy, but I was not satisfied, so I decided to study on my own. I attended classes, did a degree project, studied hard to take the Vestibular again, and worked in a restaurant to pay my bills, first as a cook and then promoted to sous chef.

In the beginning of 2009, finally, I passed my exam and enrolled in the best food science course in Latin America. Again, I had financial problems, and they were worse because my full-time program made me spend a lot of ours in college and studying outside of class.

The PepsiCo ExCEL Award has given me the opportunity to study in this prestigious public university in Brazil, and I am very happy to be studying what I have always wanted to. My scholarship is paying my tuition and expenses; I feel more comfortable, because I know my parents spending money on the education of my brothers instead of me. And I can devote myself more to studying, so today I have the eighth best grades among the 84 students in my class. I hope I will be able to apply for an exchange program next year to Canada or France, as I have always dreamed, and after that I will continue studying to be the best in what I do.

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