Ten more Foster Love clients receive AVB support
By Alan Wolf, YSN
Last year at Convention 2022 BrandSource announced an expansion of the group’s longstanding AVB Scholarship awards program. The new initiative, BrandSource Scholars, helps provide vocational training for young men and women who grew up in the foster care system.
This week at Convention 2023, 10 more deserving students from across the country were named BrandSource Scholars. This second wave of recipients included Koby Howard of Waco, Texas, who will receive the annual Bill Pleasants Sr. Scholarship award in honor of the late BrandSource president and colleague.
Created jointly with BrandSource charity partner Foster Love (formerly Together We Rise), the scholarship program “helps guide foster kids on their paths to adulthood while serving the industry by training a new generation of technicians,” explained AVB COO Dave Meekings in announcing this year’s winners.
Besides Koby, a plumbing apprentice who is earning plumbing and pipefitting certification at Texas State Technical College, the other nine recipients include:
- Nathan Guerrero: Studying to become an HVAC technician at Los Angeles Trade Technical College
- Eve Goostree: Studying industrial electrical maintenance at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology
- Jessica Fuentes Salgado: Studying to become an aircraft mechanic at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance
- Elizabeth Aquino: Studying to become an electrician at Los Angeles Trade Technical College
- Jefferson Martinez: Pursuing HVAC certification at Mt. San Antonio College
- Larri Ignacio: Studying carpentry at Los Angeles Trade Technical College in pursuit of a contractor’s license
- Victor Ignacio: Joined his brother Larri at Los Angeles Trade Technical College in pursuit of carpentry certification for a career in project management
- Jaden Berillo: Pursuing a degree in welding at Midland Community College in Texas
- Eli Robert: Studying at Massachusetts’s MTTI to become a journeyman electrician and eventually a master in electrical work.
Congratulations and much success to each of our 2023 BrandSource Scholars.
YSN publisher AVB BrandSource is the nation’s largest merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, mattress, furniture and CE dealers.
