Our Mission: The Fund provides financial, educational, and emotional support for a small number of excellent high school and university students from poor families in Quito, Ecuador. We aim to provide consistent and comprehensive support for the students and their families so that the students can complete their educations and develop fully their talents, leadership abilities, and qualities of character. This support is comprehensive, since the parents of these students choose to forgo, at considerable short-term sacrifice, the income that these students could bring to their families and permit them to continue to advance in their studies.
Here is an overview video, created by our students!
The Fund provides financial support in the form of full scholarships, grants to defray normal costs of attending university, and emergency support as needed. We provide tutoring in critical writing, reasoning, and mathematics, and other needed academic services in Quito. We maintain ongoing dialogue with our students and their families to help them flourish as students and agents of change in their communities.
Every year, we hold a picnic in the park to bring our families together. While our students have many opportunities to work together throughout the year, this is a great chance to have one, large, family reunion in David’s memory. Below you will see our most recent visit in June of 2019.
David’s Educational Opportunity Fund is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions are tax-deductible.
The work of the Fund is inspired by and dedicated to the life of David Byrd-Felker. David was a world traveler and a remarkable person and student. He disappeared in the mountains of southern Ecuador in July of 2002.
David's Educational Opportunity Fund 