August Reyes developed a passion for helping people when she was young.

As a child, she watched her father struggle with addiction and wished she could do more to help him – and heal the “brokenness” in her family – as he spent years in and out of prison. As she grew up, this desire to help began to solidify into a commitment to serving others. “It became my mission to connect people to hope and connect people to something that is bigger than themselves, and bigger than the situation that they’re going through,” she said.

August said that despite her father’s struggles, she focuses on hope and remembering the good times. “When my dad was with us, he was such an incredible man, and he has such a great heart,” she said. “We could go through these periods of time loving our time together as a family. But it just seemed like every single time, he just hit this wall, and there would be a moment where he went back to his vices. And then it would just kind of restart the cycle over again.”

When her father was incarcerated, August says she witnessed how prison ministry programs supported her father through dark times. “I saw the value in the work that those ministers were doing, and something in my heart just connected to that,” she said. “I have been in points in my life where I’ve been hopeless, but I have realized that my life actually does have value, and it does have purpose.”

“There’s always hope for something more,” she continued. “We get to decide where we go in life, and even if you’ve had a really dark past, you can still have a happy and fulfilling and beautiful life. It’s never too late.”

Today, August is a master’s student at Urshan Graduate School of Theology, working to become a certified prison chaplain. She aspires to one day work with incarcerated persons and inject light into their lives, the same way others brought hope to her father.

“It’s my belief that it’s never too late for anybody to be connected to hope,” she said. “No matter what they’ve done in life or where they’ve ended up.”

As an Amway business owner, August has also found inspiration in the people she meets in the business, noting that she admires the high value that is placed on people, their lives and their future.

While August has financially supported herself through her college education, she says the Founders Memorial Scholarship will ease some of the burden and enable her to continue pursuing her passions and bring hope to others.

“It was honestly very surreal to me,” August said. “I kept checking the email a bunch of times, thinking, ‘Is this real? Did I actually win this?’ I can’t express in words how much this scholarship is going to help me to be able to continue pursuing my passion and my calling.”

IBO Founding Family: Jere + Eileen Dutt

The Dutt family is excited to select August for the Founders Memorial Scholarship. Her faith in the face of family struggle and her vision of sharing this hope in the future with those who are in the darkest of places is a wonderful example to us all.

– The Dutt Family