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My name is Daine Becerra Garcia. I was a recipient last year with the Bay Area Gardeners Scholarship Foundation and I can’t imagine what I would have done without the help of this foundation. I currently live with my two parents, Arturo and Claudia, my brother, Josafat, and my grandma, Maria. Coming to America was very hard. I remember the first week of being here was very confusing. When we would try to communicate something to someone in Spanish, they would look at us and say, “No speak Spanish!” I remember the long nights that my parents had to work in order to keep the lights of our home. There were times when we didn’t have enough money and we’d have to light the house up with all the candles we had around the house. Knowing that my parents were working endlessly to help our family, motivated me to work hard on my studies. My parents always tell me to never give up and to keep following my dreams. There were times when I wanted to give up because I didn’t have anyone helping me with my studies. At that time I was an only child and my parents didn’t understand my homework so they couldn’t help me. When I was in Kindergarten, I remember the struggle of meeting new people and not understanding what was going on. My teacher would try to help me, but it was difficult. One day, she came into class with a big book. I remember feeling inferior to everyone around me, which was not a good feeling. She then called me over and told me that this book was for me so that I could take it home and learn new words. As a little girl, I always thought that I would not succeed because I was from a different country, but what I have learned is quite the opposite. There were many times when my friends would discourage me, telling me that I would not reach my goals. This was a very hard moment because I was a young girl with lots of goals for the future, but I was very unsure of when or if I would ever reach them. Today, I am a freshman at the university of my choice, ready to accomplish anything that comes in my way. Today, there aren’t lots of Latina women studying computer science but I really want to show people that I can study computer science. I want to represent my community by being a Latina computer scientist. I’m drawn to learn computer science because today you can connect it to anything. I realized that I wanted to learn computer science when I started helping my church with advancements in technology. I was really interested and I knew that I wanted to study something similar to what I was doing at my church. Computer science interests me because time can pass and I won’t be able to notice because I enjoy it so much. When I majored in computer science I will be doing something I love, every day. When I create my company in the future, I will use what I learned to help others learn computer science. I will teach young girls that being a Latina in the computer science industry is amazing and just knowing that I will be helping others with something that passionates me, makes me happy. Knowing that the Bay Area Garnderns Scholarship has helped many people gives me so much happiness because they are making a lot of dreams come true.