Johan (Manuel) Garcia Padilla Wins Johnson Opportunity Grant at Washington and Lee University

LEXINGTON, VA (05/21/2012)(readMedia)-- Johan (Manuel) Garcia Padilla of Mount Vernon, Wash., and a native of Mexico, has been selected for the spring/summer 2012 Johnson Opportunity Grant. The Johnson Program on Leadership and Integrity awards 25 to 30 grants each year.

Garcia Padilla will travel to the island of Hispaniola in the Dominican Republic to work with the community health project "Salud con Esperanza" (Health with Hope). He will be part of a group of students that will set up a public health education project in an impoverished community. Immigrant Haitians in that community have been victims of xenophobic reactions from natives of the Dominican Republic.

The students will be exposed to the services of local clinics in the country's healthcare system, providing an opportunity to learn how those services are delivered in the face of those ethnic clashes.

Garcia Padilla is a Spanish major with a minor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and will use his fluency in Spanish to serve as translator for the group.

The grants cover living, travel and other costs associated with the students' proposed activities, which are designed to help them with their future careers and fields of study. The grants vary in amount from $1,000 to $4,500 and are funded as part of the Johnson Program in Leadership and Integrity.