LUBBOCK—Recent high school graduate and Buckner Aftercare alum Tenneil Wallace has plenty of reasons to smile. She recently received the Family Fellowship scholarship award, which grants $90,000 each to 15 young adults across the country formerly in foster care.
After being referred to the scholarship by a community school program, she went through an extensive screening process that included a Skype interview and trip from Lubbock to California to meet the scholarship board. She waited anxiously for a month to hear the results. When she did, she found it hard to believe she had earned such a prestigious honor.
“I was overwhelmed,” she said. “It took the ride home and for me to get an email saying, ‘Welcome to the family,’ for it to really sink in.”
While the scholarship marks the culmination of years of hard work in school and activities like mock trial, National Honor Society and academic decathlon, in a way, it also marks the beginning of a life full of promise.
Life hasn’t been easy for Tenneil. Her father died when she was 7 years old. Her grandmother, who raised her after her father’s death, died when she was 13.
She and her twin brother, Taylor, entered foster care at 14 and later aged out. The twins didn’t have the support they knew they needed to thrive. That’s when Buckner Aftercare, a program designed to help young adults transition from foster care to independent living, stepped in to fill the gap.
“When we got to Buckner, they helped us find a place to live,” she said. “We were in a rough situation, but they gave us stability.”
Tenniel plans to study business management at Prairie View A&M University and hopes to apply any remaining scholarship money toward her first year of law school.
Living separately from her twin brother is bittersweet, but she knows he is only a phone call away.
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“It’s going to be new, because we’ve always been close,” she said. “It’s going to be a good experience and a hard one. When I’m not strong, he steps up, and I do the same.”
Tenneil offers words of encouragement to other young people in the foster care system and to those who seek to make a difference in their lives.
“I would like to say thank you to Buckner. Your hard work is truly making a difference,” she said. “To kids and foster kids like myself, I would say to believe in your dreams. The only way they won’t come true is if you don’t believe in them.”
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